


A Life in Snatches

by theredrobin



Series: Elizabeth & Darcy: A Life in Snatches [4]
Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Darcy babies, Domestic Fluff, During Canon, F/M, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot Collection, Post-Book(s), Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Regency, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-04 23:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredrobin/pseuds/theredrobin
Summary: It's the smallest moments that can make life that much sweeter.





	1. A Father’s Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've stumbled upon my scribblings of…everything. Invented bits that happen during or very soon after the novel. Missing scenes from my past works. Vague thoughts that didn't merit their own full story. All of it weaves together into a single timeline meant to follow canon.
> 
> This probably won't be updated consistently. I'm just going to polish my nonsense when my imagination surrenders to the wiles of Jane Austen. Well, maybe not _every_ time. That would be troublingly often.

“Papa!”

Darcy looked up from the letter he was writing with a start, blotting the parchment with ink. He had no more than pushed himself away from the desk when a small flurry that was all whirling dark curls and pale blue frock bounded into his lap and began sobbing into his waistcoat.

“Elena!” Darcy exclaimed. “What is it? Are you hurt?” The words came tumbling over each other in alarm, but no answer outside of a whimper was forthcoming. He attempted to pry her from his chest to see her properly, but her arms were much too tightly clasped around him. 

With little else to be done, he held her to him and stroked her hair while she went on crying as though her heart should break; hot, noisy, piercing weeping. All the while, he promised her in low murmurs that he would make everything better.

At length, Elena’s tears were spent. When she was only sniffling and her grasp had slackened considerably, Darcy made another attempt to loose her arms and place her further back on his knees. This time he met with little resistance, no doubt because of her exhaustion after such a violent outburst.

The face he looked into was almost an exact miniature of Elizabeth’s, but with deliberate mistakes that bespoke of his own features. At the moment, it was over-pink and the occasional residual shudder wracked his daughter’s entire little frame. An ache stirred somewhere deep inside Darcy’s chest at the sight.

“Will you tell me what happened?”

There were a few false starts before she finally managed, “I heard Uncle Richard and Aunt Georgiana talking in the music room.” The tell-tale wobble of her bottom lip let him know she was dangerously close to tears again. “He said Aunt Georgiana is going away because she will be married!”

Darcy’s heart sank. He had known the news of Georgiana’s engagement would be hard for Elena, but he wished she had not found out this way. He and Elizabeth had planned to tell her soon, to explain, but now there was nothing for it. What was worse, he realized he could not keep his promise after all. This was something he could not make better.

As though she were thinking the very same thing, she turned her glassy, pleading eyes to his. “Can you make her stay?”

“Oh, Elena, no,” he told her gently, “I cannot. She _wants_ to go, you see.”

A tear, disarming with its glisten of inexperience in either true unhappiness or unfairness, the kind only a child can cry, rolled down her cheek. In a small voice she asked, “Why does she want to leave me?”

Darcy brought up his hands to cradle her face between them. “Aunt Georgiana loves you very, very much. But when people are grown, they find someone to fall in love with and get married to, and then they go to live with each other. Mama left her home with Grandfather and Grandmother Bennet to come stay here with me.”

He had intended to comfort her in saying so, and at first the lineaments of her face smoothed into something like calmness before crumpling again in terror. “I will have to go away without you and Mama when I am a lady?”

“Not if you do not want to,” Darcy reassured her quickly, “but you might feel differently when you are older.” Even as he said it, his heart swelled, and he allowed himself to entertain the selfish, unaffected desire that she would always be with them at Pemberley.

Wiping her tear-stained cheeks with his thumbs, he lifted her to sit atop his desk while he rose to pour her a drink of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. Once he had her sip from the glass, he took her up in his arms again and carried her to her bedchamber. Elena protested a bit once they reached their destination, but she could not resist the decided heaviness of her eyelids for long and drifted off almost as soon as her father tucked her in. Seeing her asleep, Darcy kissed her cheek and quietly left her to the custody of Miss Hart, who would divide her time between here and her other two slumbering charges in the nursery.  

In the corridor, he leaned back into the closed door and let his eyes fall shut.

“You handled that very well.”

Elizabeth was before him.

Smiling softly and holding out her hand, which he took, she led him to their rooms. Once they were alone, he caught her up and embraced her tightly. She, in turn, stroked the curls at the nape of his neck in a soothing gesture, much as he had done with Elena.

“Is it too much to hope that she will always want to stay with us?” he finally voiced aloud in an accent that was muffled against her neck.

Regarding him with mild confusion, she pulled away to question, “Georgiana?”

“…Elena.”

Elizabeth’s eyes brightened with amusement. “My love, she is but five. I hardly think it time to let yourself be disturbed with thoughts of her leaving us quite yet.”

Darcy’s expression continued to be pensive and brooding.

“Oh dear. Do you need to be comforted too, Fitzwilliam?” she asked archly.

“Perhaps,” he said, his lips twitching into a supposedly reluctant smile. “How do you sugge—” 

But Elizabeth was already kissing him soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Colonel Fitzwilliam isn't actually an uncle to Darcy and Elizabeth's children, but I think they could refer to him that way.
> 
> Sorry—take this in advance too—that I suck so bad at titles.


	2. Past All Hope

He felt numb, but then, it made sense that he would feel nothing. There was nothing for him without her.

How could he have been so wrong? So utterly unguarded with his own feelings and blind enough to deceive himself in hers?

Darcy made a sound he had meant to be a derisive laugh, but it came out so choked, it was more of a groan.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Colonel Fitzwilliam cast him a plainly anxious look from astride his great gray mare. He knew very well he was scaring his cousin with his behavior, but it could not matter to him.

Nothing mattered except that she had refused him. It was the only thought in his head, her words echoing louder and louder, mocking him.

How could she hate him when he loved her so completely?

To his horror, his eyes filled with miserable tears. He turned briskly in his saddle, affecting to observe something in the distance so Richard would not see.

.*.

After giving Elizabeth his letter, Darcy was wild to be gone.

When he had finally come upon her in the grove, she looked a little pale, to be sure, but her loveliness aglow in the morning sunlight still made his breath catch in his throat. He had not slept, had barely had the presence of mind to tie his neckcloth and retrieve his hat before leaving the house just after dawn. Nothing of his appearance or manner betrayed any of this.

She had taken the letter from him without question, doubtless to be rid of him as soon as could be done. That was just as well; he did not think he could countenance hearing her repeat any of those sentiments said last night. His aching heart would surely stop beating in protest.

With a perfunctory bow, he bid her farewell and strode away. He could feel her eyes burning into him as he did, but forced himself not to turn back. It could do no good.

The moment he stepped foot inside the entrance hall of Rosings, he directed a servant to tell his valet to begin packing his belongings immediately and another to send for Colonel Fitzwilliam to meet him in the library. He was determined to be gone within the half-hour.

In the meanwhile, he attempted to distract himself with what meager collection of books that room had to offer, a hopeless cause. His mind was not settled enough for any useful employment.

Richard came in a very few minutes and sank into the chair across from him with a half-bemused smile quirking his lips. “What folly is this, Darcy? Are you well?”

“Quite,” Darcy bit out his reply. Long sentences would not do. “I have business with my steward in town that can no longer be delayed.”

His cousin did not look convinced.

“Surely you have spent more than enough of your leave here with Aunt Catherine to suffice for the time being?”

The colonel laughed. “I shall not contest you on that. Well, you know me, I am at your disposal.” Relief flooded Darcy until he went on to say, “But would it not be better for us to wait at least until to-morrow and be off at first light? Half the day will be gone by the time everything is readied and we take our leave at the parsonage.”

He looked up sharply. “The parsonage?”

“Yes. It would be abominably uncivil to go without paying a final visit.”

“And since when have you been one to eschew incivility?” Darcy said rather more harshly than he had intended.

Richard visibly started. “What the devil has gotten into you, Darcy?” He cocked his head to one side and studied him more closely. Darcy forced his face to remain smooth and blank under his scrutiny. “Have you had some sort of misunderstanding with Miss Bennet?”

He could not help but break his pretense of composure at that. “ _What_?”

“I spoke with her just before tea last evening. Bingley came up in our conversation and she seemed, ah, rather interested in the service you did him some months past. I thought perhaps she had mentioned it to you.”

For a moment, Darcy could not speak. He wanted to be angry with Richard, for repeating something he had told him in confidence, for providing Elizabeth with yet another reason to despise him, but he could not bring himself to it. In detaching Bingley from Miss Bennet he still defended himself to have been in the right, but when he recollected in what terms he had related the story to his cousin, he felt no little shame. If Richard had painted the deed in that same light, it was no wonder she could not stand the sight of him.

More to evade giving an answer to his cousin’s dreadfully accurate line of questioning than anything, Darcy found himself conceding to Richard’s initial charge. “Let us go quickly then.”

.*.

On their ride to the parsonage, for Darcy the perverse desire to see Elizabeth was overwhelming. Had she read his letter? Would she give credit to anything he had written over Wickham’s silver-tongued lies? Did he dare hope her opinion of him might be softened?

_Enough_! What was it to him if any or all those things had happened? She had refused him. She was to be forgotten, and that would be the end of it.

His heart clamored in disapproval at the deceit of those thoughts.

However, there was only Mrs Collins and Miss Lucas at home when they arrived. The lady of the house informed the gentlemen that Mr Collins was just gone out to call on some of the parishioners, and her friend was away on her morning exercise.

Darcy offered the greetings required of him, but he left the remaining pleasantries entirely for Colonel Fitzwilliam to make. It was impossible for him to sit idly in _this_ room of all places. She had sat in the very spot Mrs Collins did now when he came to see if she was ill. He had braced himself against that mantle-piece as she spurned his offer and declared him to be the last man in the world she could ever marry. It had been a severe blow to his pride, he could not deny that. And yet, he thought he would gladly endure a thousand more like it had not his heart also depended upon the matter, had she but given him a favorable reply.

As the others had their discourse, he stood fixed by the parlor window, agitated and in agony as he both hoped and despaired that Elizabeth would come at last. He could not bear it after less than a quarter of an hour. It was clear she had no wish to see him, and might even be deliberately staying away if she saw his horse tied to the gatepost outside.

He hastily made his excuses, gave his compliments to the ladies, and departed, not waiting for the servant to see him out.

.*.

By the time Richard returned, it was very nearly midday.

He hesitated before telling his cousin that while the clergyman had returned only a few moments ago—”bowing and scraping in his usual way for our condescension to think of them before we quitted Kent,” he said with a roll of his eyes—Elizabeth had never come after all, and he had left regards for her from both of them with Mrs Collins.

A sudden disquiet gripped Darcy. What had become of her? Was she all right? Was anything being done to recover her? He shook his head to dismiss those contemplations. As much as it pained him, she was not his to look after, nor would she welcome any concern from that quarter.

Their aunt, of course, was less than pleased at their going if for no other reason than she had not been consulted in forming their plans, and moreover that her nephews would not be persuaded to remain another se’nnight. She made a remark to the effect that Darcy in particular should extend his stay if he was so unhappy to leave them, her eyes drifting to her daughter as she did.

Darcy repressed a grimace. At times, he believed his aunt to be every bit as ridiculous and ill-bred as Mrs Benn—no! He would not allow himself to consider anything in connection with that family. Or her.

A vague comment or two about estate business on his part was enough to appease Lady Catherine into silence, but Darcy noticed Anne watching him narrowly and exchanging glances with Richard all through the evening.

At daybreak, the two were off. They rode towards London furiously, taking Darcy’s lead, but he was soon obligated to slow their pace so as not to fatigue the horses too quickly.

With nothing more strenuous than maintaining a gallop to occupy his thoughts, Darcy’s mind dwelt on the only object it could, though he struggled mightily within himself to resist the urge.

…had he been arrogant in his proposal?

_No,_ he resolved, _no. I was perfectly right in telling her my misgivings. Her…her vanity…_.

He would never see her again; his traitorous heart was taking its vengeance on him at the very idea. To her he had written that they should both forget what had been said, but Darcy knew with absolute certainty he never could. He should have taken more care and now it was all too late.

She with all her beauty and intelligence and liveliness would fall in love and become the wife of another, become mother to another man’s children, and he…he would live but half a life, for he could not stop loving her even now, yet she would never be his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red's Law: Something sweet in writing must then have something distressing to compensate.
> 
> Apparently.
> 
> I know Darcy seems kind of all over the place in this—he's numb, he's angry, he's unhappy—but I think his emotions would be in chaos after Elizabeth refuses him.


	3. Overprotective

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth is restive and wild to be outside just after her accident in _In the Depth of Winter_. Darcy won't hear of it.

“If I promise to keep to the gardens?”

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” came sternly in reply.

“Then at the very least I might go downstairs. To the library! Dr Neil said there could be no harm in it.”

“Anything you have need of can be brought to you. I shall fetch it myself.”

Elizabeth exhaled—a violent, impatient sound. That was hardly the object. Crossing her arms as she sank into an armchair, she looked away from her husband, quite conscious that she must look like a petulant child, but far too vexed to let it be of any consequence.

“You cannot keep me here forever.”

For above a week now, Darcy had refused to allow her to venture from their chambers, saying she needed constant rest to properly recover. He was implacable, and indeed, had it been left for him to decide, she would be confined to her bed altogether, but _that_ indignity Elizabeth fought against to the last until he finally relented to the inadequate liberty of her being able to move about the bedroom and the adjoining parlor.

It was true, she was still weaker than she ought to have been, but she would never own to it. She shuddered to think how exponentially more unreasonable he might become if he were to learn of it. Besides, would not a little of her usual exertion help restore her constitution in full?

Darcy was certainly not of the same opinion, and to her displeasure, neither Jane nor Georgiana, not even ever-accommodating Charles, would be her champion in this matter. Both her sister and his either talked of something different when the topic arose as though to distract her, or were in outright agreement with him. On the occasions that he was present, Charles would only look to his friend and remain uncharacteristically silent. They all seemed convinced she was an invalid, and she would not have it.

There came another sigh, this time from him. “Elizabeth…do not be angry with me, please. If…if you had any idea…” he faltered.

She could not have kept herself from glancing back towards him had she wanted. His fingers were raking through his jetty mass of curls, leaving them in a bit of a disarray. The expression of anguish that she would catch haunting his eyes every so often since she awoke had returned again, making him look boyish and lost.

Her heart was not of stone. Remorse pierced her for having been the cause of that hurt. She had forgotten how shaken he was over this entire affair.

Forsaking her seat and her pride, Elizabeth went to him. “I am sorry.” She kissed him on the lips before burying her face against his chest. “I am a trying patient, I know. Jane told me so often enough growing up when I fell ill and she charged with nursing me back to health for me to know it to be true. After all, if she can say something the least bit uncharitable, it must be so.”

“Hmm.” She felt his lips curve into a small smile at her hair. “Whenever Georgiana felt unwell, she would liken me to a prison warden and more often than not escape from her rooms before I gave her leave.”

Elizabeth laughed and said, “Oh do not tempt me.”

His arms tightened around her a little and they held each other quietly for a time.

It was he who broke the silence. “What if we take a turn the length of the corridor? To my study, not beyond,” he amended hastily.

Surprised, but by no means averse to his suggestion, Elizabeth approved of it at once. This, at last, was progress.  

“But you shall still take tea with Jane and Georgiana in the adjacent parlor?” Darcy asked apprehensively, as though he feared his wife might suddenly run mad with this newfound freedom.

“Yes, Fitzwilliam,” she assented, even as she tugged him towards the door by his hand.

“Stay a moment; you shall need a shawl. You cannot take cold from any drafts.”

Restrained and cautious perhaps, but progress nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I the only one who feels that Darcy would get along famously with Mr Woodhouse?


	4. A Late Night Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I originally wrote for _Of Family_ but ended up taking out because I never could manage to word it quite right. I figured I might as well include it with these scraps as not.

Murmuring, soothing and low, drew Elizabeth from sleep well before daybreak.

“…let us hope, for your sake, in that you take after your mother.”

Darcy’s head was resting on the rise of her stomach.

Eyes closed, she smiled but said not a word. He had a right to keep this exchange private if he wished.

“I have a confession,” came his voice then, quite unexpectedly and almost painfully tinged with something akin to despair. “Do not think too badly of me, but…I am a little frightened.” He paused, as if collecting his thoughts. “The happiness I feel…that I have felt…it seems too good to be real. I think, at times, it cannot last, and I am afraid of it all just slipping away.”

Elizabeth bit her lip. She was about to break her resolve not to interfere, had all but done it, when a barrage of fierce little kicks anticipated her.

And that seemed all the reply and comfort he needed. 

Darcy gave a quiet laugh, his cheek still pressed to her abdomen. “You are perfectly right.” 

He fell silent for a long while, and Elizabeth thought perhaps he had fallen asleep when he spoke again, the vibrations of his voice tickling her skin. 

“There is something I want you to understand. Though your mother shall be better at it— _far_ better—and I may not know the exact right thing to say or do, you can always come to me. Always, and for anything. You must promise me.”

She felt the baby give another, fainter flutter.

It was shortly after this that her husband slowly moved to lie beside her. Once their soft, even breaths were the only sound to be heard, Elizabeth reached out through the dark and wrapped her fingers around the wrist of the hand Darcy had kept at her stomach.

She was only a little surprised when he gently but deliberately extricated himself from this one-sided hold so he might lace their fingers together.


	5. Ever a Gentleman

The upsurge in Mrs Bennet’s nerves occasioned by the betrothals of her two eldest daughters was such that not three days after Darcy had secured Mr Bennet’s consent, she declared she could not be expected to plan a wedding in less than ten weeks if it was to be done with any degree of credibility. 

The near identical expressions of alarm bordering on horror that overtook the young gentlemen’s countenances at this pronouncement might have amused Elizabeth under different circumstances. As it was, she could only listen as Bingley spluttered an attempt to convince her mother that such a lengthy engagement was not necessary.

“Mrs Bennet, surely you do not do justice to your abilities. I should think you would be able to accomplish the arrangements in _half_ that time.” He had tried to say the last offhandedly, but the nervous energy in his manner belied his earnestness.

Mrs Bennet tittered. “You are all kindness, Mr Bingley, but it is decided. Ten weeks, at the least, for we must go to London and stay with my brother and sister Gardiner while we shop for the girls’ trousseaus. Oh! And we cannot neglect—”

Unfortunately, Bingley’s aversion to anything like disagreement deterred his reply, not that he was given an opportunity to make one. While her mother went on to explain in gratuitous detail all that she felt called for a trip to town, Elizabeth swore she heard a stifled guffaw come from the direction of her father’s armchair, though she could not be sure since Mr Bennet chose that exact moment to rather abruptly turn the page of his paper.

When Mrs Bennet paused to take breath, Darcy tacitly intervened. “I must agree with Mr Bingley on this, Mrs Bennet. I have every faith in your capacity as hostess.” He shifted in his seat, a look of some chagrin flickering over his mien as he went on. “Once the special licenses have been obtained—” Mrs Bennet, who had already been all attention, immediately stopped twisting her handkerchief. “—I see no reason for such delay.”

Silence, thick with expectation, filled the drawing room. Then—

“Well…I suppose I could manage tolerably well with six weeks.”

Darcy said nothing, but Elizabeth did not miss the almost imperceptible smile that touched his lips while profound relief openly washed over Bingley’s face.

This time, Mr Bennet found himself quite unequal to concealing his bark of laughter.

.*.

When Mr Bennet could not tolerate another word about the length of trains or which courses were to be served at the wedding breakfast, he predictably escaped to his library. The only difference was that now, he extended his sanctuary to his future sons-in-law to spare them the excesses of his wife.

Jane and Elizabeth, for their part, were perfectly content to give Mrs Bennet reign over the wedding preparations. Along with not sharing in her affinity for protracted talk of lace and other fripperies, it was much easier for the daughters to choose more suitable fabrics or raise the décolletage of their gowns quietly after the fact than to turn their mother to their preferences while she was amidst the initial fits of infatuation.

So it was that the affianced were mostly left to their own devices. Their favorite way to pass the time was to go out into the countryside, sometimes to Oakham Mount, oftener without direction. Each couple acted as the other’s—very distracted—chaperones, but not one of the four could bring themselves to fault Mrs Bennet this breach of propriety.

Whether unintentional or by design, the walking party would inevitably find themselves separated along these rambles. Bingley and Jane would set a pace so leisurely and pause so often, that they might have sat down for all the good the exercise did them—and no doubt they did in fact eventually find a shaded bench on which to rest rather than stand in the middle of the road gazing at each other.  

Darcy and Elizabeth, on the other hand, roamed nearly all of Meryton during these excursions. It was on one such outing not very long after their engagement that Elizabeth found herself alone with Darcy.

The two had lost sight of Jane and Bingley quite an hour since. For once, the greater share of the conversation was Darcy’s, for Elizabeth had chosen a subject on which he could not be silent: Pemberley. She listened with a small smile playing about her lips as he described for her his particular favorite spots on the grounds and which seasons had them at their best advantage, his eagerness to show it all to her evident in every word.

The coppice in which they presently found themselves was shaded and pleasant, so they settled on the dry grass and overlooked the expanse that stretched before them. 

“I had almost forgotten. A letter from Georgiana came this morning. Three pages were not enough to contain her excitement and congratulations. She cannot come soon enough to see you again.”

“I feel the same,” affectionately said she. “When does she arrive?”

“Richard shall collect her from Derbyshire and accompany her here a week before the wedding.”

Elizabeth titled her head in question. “So late?”

He did not reply right away. Instead, his hand reached over to catch hold of one of hers. Briefly, he met her eyes and then proceeded to remove her glove so that they were touching skin to skin. Both were lost in the activity as he tenderly traced along her wrist, her palm, her fingers, as though to commit its every contour to memory.

“I am not ready to share you just yet.” 

.*.

The peaceful solitude of the morning passed away, and all too soon, the time had come to return to Longbourn.

As Darcy took Elizabeth’s—now gloved—hand to help her rise, she wrinkled her nose as she contemplated the stark contrast between these moments with her intended and the prospect that awaited her at home.

“Must we go?”

“I am afraid so,” he laughed. “If your mother does not have some help, what is to keep her from threatening to have us married in July?”

To see him standing before her as he was, free of the confinement of refined company and formalities, one corner of his mouth curved in a puckish smile with such an expression of happiness and adoration suffusing his features so that it rendered him handsomer even than he was already, and all of it directed towards her, was rather more than she could bear. 

“I love you.”

Darcy’s eyes widened slightly, and in them Elizabeth could see a thousand feelings fighting for ascendancy. Delight. Bewilderment. Something at once vaguely familiar and ineffable.

The power she had over him with just a scant few syllables made her feel for a moment overwhelmed, but after all, it was the first time she had spoken them. Oh, she had assured him she felt the same as he, every look and touch between them implied it, but never had she uttered it in so many words. Elizabeth wanted to be sure he understood she truly meant it, that she was not marrying him out of some misplaced sense of gratitude, and she had spent the days since his proposal trying to find the right moment. This declaration without forethought or ceremony was not what she had in mind, but she had not been able to help it.

Before Elizabeth could attempt to recollect anything else at all that she had purposed to tell him at such a moment, Darcy was closer to her than he had ever been, even when they were alone. There was the barest hesitation, a question in his eyes as he searched hers for its answer, and then he touched his lips to hers. He kissed her softly, slowly, one of his hands at her neck. Elizabeth’s eyes fell shut, and after a self-conscious pause, she tentatively brought her hands to rest lightly on his chest. Darcy lingered for as long as he dared.

When they broke apart, both of them looked feverish, with overbright eyes and flushed complexions that defied the crisp bite in the air.

And Elizabeth had thought herself affected when he brushed a kiss against the back of her hand.

It must be said that in that instant, Darcy had every intention of escorting Elizabeth directly back to Longbourn. He had every intention of repressing the urge with which every fiber of his being begged him to comply, salvaging the tattered remnants of his senses, and allowing the expectations of gentlemanly conduct impressed upon him for a lifetime to act as his guide.

Such were his intentions, but that was before Elizabeth reached up to run her fingers gently through his hair.

Scarcely knowing how it happened, she was in his arms again, and his mouth moved over hers frantically, searching hungrily, and she did the same. Caught irretrievably in the moment, Elizabeth parted her lips, almost unconsciously. It was all the encouragement he needed to pull her body flush against his own and kiss her more wildly, desperately.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. Elizabeth felt Darcy tear himself away, recoiling as though struck, and when she opened her clouded eyes, it was to find him several paces away looking wretched.  

Some minutes passed in silence punctured only by their rough, shallow breathing. Elizabeth hopelessly tried to quiet her heart as it continued to tumble recklessly in her breast.

Finally, Darcy’s agitation forced him to speak. “Elizabeth, I—Elizabeth, forgive me. I never meant—”

Eyes flashing, she offered a look that told him there was nothing to forgive as clearly as if she had spoken aloud. When he opened his mouth as if to argue, she blushed a little before saying, “I do not believe I did anything to stop you.” She was not entirely surprised to see him blush as well. “Unless, of course, you feel I too should apologize?”

His burning gaze was answer enough.

Coming to her once again, Darcy took up her hands to cradle them against his chest and gently pressed his forehead to hers. “Six weeks,” he said plaintively, cursing every single hour, minute, and second that stood between them.

Elizabeth gave an unsteady laugh. Never had six weeks seemed so interminable a length of time.

.*.

On their walk back to Longbourn, Elizabeth was struck with a thought that nearly made her laugh at its absurdity.

“Perhaps you should ask the Colonel to bring Georgiana earlier after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Miss Austen,
> 
> I beg you to forgive me for borrowing your characters and placing them in less than delicate situations which are then described in indecorous detail. I fear I am—and shall continue to be—a repeat offender.
> 
> Love,  
> Red


	6. The Heart Asks Pleasure First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summer stole the words; it smothered every spark. How hard it is to start again with nothing but the dark.

Elizabeth laughed as she twirled and sashayed across the floor, her cheeks pinked with a rosy glow. As a rule she enjoyed dancing, but in this particular instance, her pleasure was owed less to the act itself than to the individual with whom she was engaged.

When the lively folk reel drew to a close and Elizabeth, rather breathless, stilled, her partner made an inarticulate but unmistakable sound of protest. To this, she could not help but toss her head back in mirth.

“So sullen! Whatever am I to think when you look at me with such an expression?”

The pair of dark, vivid eyes continued to regard her half morosely, half hopefully.

“Very well,” Elizabeth relented with a smile, quite powerless to refuse. “Again, Elena?”

Her daughter, spirited, restless little thing that she was, deliberately nodded her approval. To be truthful, at barely over a year old she was at a juncture where a nod would be offered in answer to any question put to her, whether she was actually in favor of it or not.

Georgiana giggled from the pianoforte bench. “Perhaps ‘Season of the Sun’ this time? Or, oh, I know—a waltz!”

“Might I claim the honor of the next set?”

All turned towards the entrance of the music room from whence the voice had come only to discover Darcy, his eyes twinkling, leaning comfortably in the open doorway as though he had been there for quite some time.

At the sight of him, Elena gave a blithe shriek and instantly began to wriggle in her mother’s arms to be let down. Once aground, she toddled until she reached his legs, her upraised hands fisting and unfisting as she looked up.

“Miss Darcy,” he bowed with mock solemnity before scooping her up and whirling them both about as Georgiana’s fingers flew over the keys once more.

Elena’s laughter, which along with her mama’s had drawn Darcy from his study to begin with, came bubbling. Ever since the first time that infectious, half mad sound came about, Pemberley was forever echoing with it. It now weaved in the air with Darcy’s own deeper, richer tones between his pressing little kisses to the curls at the crown of her head.

.*.

That evening at supper, Darcy watched his wife carefully, and not for the first time, he wondered if he should send for the doctor.

Elizabeth’s repeated assurances that she was perfectly well had done little to convince him. He had eyes. For some weeks now, her appetite was not what it should have been; to-night, the fillet of veal in her plate remained virtually untouched, as had the previous dishes.

More disquieting to him, however, were the faint shadows beneath her eyes. Though she would never confess it, Darcy had noticed how much more easily Elizabeth would become fatigued of late, but far be it from her to submit to any kind of frailty by rendering herself amenable to it.

As Georgiana asked after Mary and how she liked being mistress of her new home, Elizabeth caught Darcy staring. She returned his look with an enquiring one of her own and a wan smile before cheerfully relating the particulars of Mary’s letter that morning.

Hardly had half an hour passed after they removed to the library when whatever immaterial attention Darcy was able to devote to the volume in his hand was captured by a soft weight settling onto his shoulder. Elizabeth had fallen asleep. Setting aside his book and hers as it lay abandoned on her lap, he studied her face at length and felt a shock of dismay at seeing how pale was her complexion.

With knitted brows, he glanced up to find his sister still absorbed in embroidering handkerchiefs by the fire.

“Georgiana,” said he quietly, bringing her needle to pause, “should you mind terribly if we left you to retire early?”

Eyes flickering unsurely from Elizabeth to her brother’s uneasy countenance, Georgiana replied, “No, of course not.”

Reluctant to wake her, Darcy gathered his wife into his arms. He bid his sister a good night, distractedly quitted the room, and once he reached their chamber, he dismissed Lily and his valet for the night.

Elizabeth’s lashes fluttered as Darcy was doffing her silk slippers.

“Fitzwilliam?”

“Shh. Go back to sleep, Elizabeth.”

She gave a chuckle that was low and throaty with sleep. “Have you mistaken me for Elena? I am altogether capable of—”

“As am I,” he interrupted her feeble protests, smiling gently in the dark as he pulled the pins from her hair.

By the time Darcy finished, Elizabeth had all but drifted off again. He dressed himself quickly and joined her under the counterpane. She brushed her lips against the corner of his jaw, curling into him as his arm lay its possessive claim of her waist, warding away the early February chill.

.*.

As Elizabeth readied herself to go down to breakfast one morning, Lily was taking longer than was ordinary in helping her dress. Not wanting to mortify the poor girl, who was timid enough as it was, Elizabeth said nothing. No sooner had she formed this resolve than her lady’s maid addressed her.

“Mrs Darcy?”

Elizabeth met her gaze in the reflection of the looking glass. “Yes?”

For a moment, Lily visibly struggled to speak. With a flustered air, she managed, “Your stays, madam. I…I cannot seem to tighten them properly.”

“Really? How strange. I was just fitted…”

Elizabeth’s voice trailed off and her eyes went unfocused for a long moment, seeing nothing.

“Oh,” she breathed.

.*.

Elizabeth knew she had appeared to be woolgathering all day, but there was a reasonable explanation for it: she was.

Upon wandering into the breakfast room that morning, she found the rest of her family already at the table. She joined them, only to sit stirring sugar into her tea until it was too cold to drink. So abstracted was she that Darcy had to repeat himself three times and touch his fingers to hers before she finally realized he was speaking.

He looked at her with a crease between his brows, confusion and concern etched on his face. Oh, how she longed to tell him right then and there; it was dancing on her tongue, her lips were trembling with it. But Elizabeth knew Darcy was due to spend the day surveying the damage rising river waters from the melting snow had wreaked on bridges over the property.

This time, as it should be, the discovery was hers to make, to tell, and she did not want to have to part with her husband so soon after.

So she would wait. She could be mistress of herself for a few hours.

A changeable propensity marked Elizabeth’s behavior for the rest of the day. She started letters only to leave them unfinished. Her sampler was taken up a dozen times and impatiently discarded just as often. Books required a degree of concentration she could not summon. More than once, Elizabeth felt a burning flush creep over her face and neck. It had even drawn Georgiana’s notice, prompting her to ask if she was well.

Elena alone seemed to recommend her any sense of her usual self, and Elizabeth scarcely let the baby leave her sight until she put her down in the nursery for the night.

As the evening waned and Darcy returned home, her distraction became more pronounced, but at last the time came to retire.

The fire their only light, they prepared for bed. Elizabeth sat brushing her hair with long, unhurried strokes at the vanity.

“Elizabeth, is something wrong? You’ve seemed out of sorts since this morning.”

She turned to face her husband as he sat up in their bed. “Have I?”

“ _Yes_ ,” was his emphatic reply.

Setting the gilded brush aside, Elizabeth moved across the room and slipped under the quilts with him, considering her answer all the while.

“I have only been thinking…”

“Mmm, dangerous indeed,” Darcy teased, easing back into the pillows.

She reached over to take up one of his hands then, toying with his fingers, threading and unthreading them with her own.

“I was thinking,” she continued slowly, “that Elena must be lonely having no one her own age to play with. The Bingleys are too far for Charlie to be an everyday companion for her. I had the Lucases just down the lane growing up, to say nothing of my sisters.” Elizabeth paused. “I suppose _something_ could be done to put the latter to rights...”

And with her eyes intent on his, she brought his hand to her abdomen, gently pressing it there while she bit her lip against the happiness that was threatening to undo her.

For a few breathless seconds, Darcy was silent. In the next moment, he bolted upright, but his eyes, wide and searching in the firelight, never left hers. “Elizabeth, are you...are you saying...?”

A dazzling smile spread over her face. “I need Neil to confirm it, but yes, I think so.”

The words were hardly out of Elizabeth’s mouth before Darcy was suddenly atop her and, with a tremulous laugh, began kissing her passionately.

.*.

As the days grew warmer and Elizabeth grew, the passing months gave rise to a great many changes.

Spring was harbinger to both Elena’s first words and the unborn baby’s first movements. Not long after the Darcys shared their joyous news, Colonel Fitzwilliam and his wife learned they were expecting their firstborn. By summer’s end, a triumphant Mrs Bennet saw Kitty, her last unmarried daughter, engaged to Mr Oliver Shaw, a clergyman from Holloway with whom she had made and perpetuated an acquaintance in the course of her visits to Pemberley until it progressed from friendship to a mutual attachment.

The day after Kitty’s letter had come, a particularly vigorous kick startled Elizabeth from sleep in the small hours of the morning.

She rubbed the spot, vaguely wondering if it was a foot or a hand, and drowsily unclosed her eyes. She blinked as the bed, empty but for her, presented itself. Raising herself upright, she peered around the room, yet in shadow, for her husband.

Darcy was standing by the window.

Incapable as she was in her condition of a graceful disentanglement from the sheets, Elizabeth came to his side without him realizing it. She touched his arm.

“What are you doing awake?”

He fleetingly glanced over at the sound of her voice and covered her hand with his, but her question hung unanswered for several minutes as they both watched the fading stars.

“I don’t think I can bear to go through it again!” at last burst from him fiercely as he turned towards her.

Elizabeth took in his face, twisted in torment, and flung her arms around him, her urgent whispers promising him that it would be different this time even as he felt her shiver with the same unspoken fear that it might not.

He stepped away just far enough to look at her. She could have broken his heart with the picture she made—his wife, heavy with the child they had made and willing to give everything of herself. Everything for those she loved, everything for their children. Everything for him.

When they returned to bed, Darcy fell asleep entwined around his wife, one hand resting protectively over her stomach.

.*.

It was a mild September night when Elizabeth awoke to pains.

An hour after her travails had begun in earnest, Darcy found himself facing the damnable door of the confinement room once again.

He had thought he would have more time with her, but everything was happening more quickly this time. Their moments alone were brief and tender, intimate and punctuated with uprushes of panic and pain that were chased by reciprocally soothing exchanges.

Dr Neil and the midwife arrived on the heels of the messenger who had gone for them, while one of the maids hastened to the guest wing to tell Jane that she was needed with her sister when it could no longer be helped. Together, they turned Darcy out of the room.

All he could do now was wait.

Not Mrs Reynolds, not Bingley, not even Georgiana could persuade him to go below stairs with them. He would stay here. If Elizabeth needed him, he would be close by.

Darcy’s mind worked in jerks and spasms as the hours crawled by. He heard cries that sent him leaping to his feet, hovering near the door as if to force the lock. Try as he did to fight it, he inevitably found his thoughts overcome with memories of the day Elena was born. It came to him in sharp fragments and chaotic impressions that snatched at his breath. Elizabeth in terrible pain. How close they had come to losing Elena. Himself, useless, _useless_ , as his entire world was crumbling around him.

He pressed his lips tightly against the growl of agony tearing at the inside of his chest. Before he could think about it, Darcy rose from his post and strode away from the room, down to the second floor.

Miss Hart and Miss Everblanc were surprised, to say the least, to discover that the soft knock on the nursery door was Mr Darcy, but that was nothing to when he asked them to leave their charges to him, if only for a few minutes.

Once the nursemaids stepped outside, he turned to the children. It was quite early in the morning by now, and Charlie was sleeping soundly in the new cradle he and Elizabeth had put in the nursery. Nearabout two and a half years old, he had Bingley’s light blue eyes and honey-blond curls diluted with his mother’s sweetness of temper.

Gaze drifting from his nephew to the other pannier, Darcy saw that its occupant was awake and looking at him steadily from between the palings.

He lifted his daughter into his arms, rocking her gently as she tucked her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder, still partly asleep. “I am sorry for disturbing you, Elena,” he murmured.

She did not seem to mind, her tiny fingers curling into his disheveled neckcloth.

“Mama?”

Darcy’s throat constricted painfully. “You can see Mama soon, I promise you.”

It was not long before her weight snuggled more deeply into his embrace, letting him know she had fallen asleep once more.

As he held her, something inside of him shifted. Harrowing as the last delivery experience was, from it had come Elena, and here she was, warm and alive and _theirs_ —his and Elizabeth’s—and that was comfort for anything.

He went back to the sun-splashed gallery, resuming his vigil with a fretful energy that would not allow him to sit. Another half an hour wasted in that manner.

And then… _and then_ …

A new sound pierced the air. Darcy froze, too far gone to be able to understand if his ears could be trusted.

When the door cracked open some indeterminable time later, Jane, beaming, stepped back to invite him inside, and he shuffled only a few bewildered steps into the room.

The sight that beckoned beyond the door could not have been more different than that of nearly two years ago. Looking exhausted but radiant, Elizabeth was resting serenely on pillows propped against the headboard, her arms full.

Focused entirely on his wife and the blanketed bundle she held, he was hardly conscious of Neil clapping his shoulder on his way out or that he was followed by the midwife and Jane to leave the Darcys to themselves.

He stood there still as Elizabeth turned her sparkling eyes to him.

“Come meet your son, Fitzwilliam.”

Darcy moved to sit gingerly on the bed, and Elizabeth laid their baby in his arms.

The newborn stared up at him quietly for a little while, then wrinkled his nose and opened his mouth as wide as it could go in a breathy yawn before turning into his father’s chest and nuzzling closer, fast asleep.

Tearing his eyes away from his son’s face, Darcy brought one hand to cradle Elizabeth’s cheek and leaned forward to kiss her ardently. “I love you,” he told her in a voice that shook with emotion, blinking back tears. “So very much.”

Between them, Christopher Fitzwilliam Darcy slept on, blissfully unaware that he was of any great moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title ~~ripped off~~ lovingly borrowed from Michael Nyman, the brilliant bastard.


	7. In Remembrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an adverb problem. Seriously.

They had hardly been at Pemberley a se’nnight after returning from their honeymoon trip, but this was something which Elizabeth had been thinking of for some time.

That morning, she approached her husband’s study just as his steward, a sheaf of papers tucked under his arm, was taking leave of the room. With a small bow in her direction, the man continued on his way and discreetly closed the door behind himself while Darcy stood from his desk, smiling brightly as he came closer to kiss her.

He looked so happy that Elizabeth quailed in her resolve to finally say anything at all about it.

Brushing another kiss at her temple, Darcy murmured against her hair, “Have you any plans for the day?”

Delightfully distracted she admittedly was as he began to nuzzle the delicate skin of her throat and ear, but of their own accord, her eyes fell on the pair of miniatures which sat upon the mantelpiece.

“Fitzwilliam.” Her uncharacteristically serious tone must have given him pause; Elizabeth felt him draw away to see her face, though he did not release her entirely from his embrace. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she went on hesitantly, “I was hoping you might take me to...pay my respects.”

As she said it, her gaze wandered to again stare fixedly at the small watercolor portraits above the fireplace until he followed her line of sight. The smile slipped from his lips then, and the guilt Elizabeth experienced over causing it, for bringing him pain, made her heart quiver.

There was a time, hard as it was to imagine now, that his expression would have been indecipherable to her, or worse still, wrongly understood. Watching him, she could easily see the initial surprise flicker over his features as he took in the meaning of her request before giving way to a curiously tender and vulnerable look that softened both the line of his mouth and his eyes.

Elizabeth saw it all, and with gentle deliberateness, lifted her hand to cup his cheek.

.*.

The fragile, muted crackle of frost underfoot echoed through the otherwise still Lambton churchyard as they wended a path among the scattered tombs.

Darcy guided her to a secluded corner of the grounds, partially enclaved by high stone walls which were covered in holly and ivy, until they came before a white marble headstone bearing two names etched side by side.

 

_George Darcy_

_15 March 1758 – 2 October 1807_

_Anne Darcy_

_3 June 1764 – 21 August 1799_

 

Lightly squeezing his elbow, Elizabeth slid her hand from Darcy’s arm and knelt to lay the knot of deep violet windflowers she had brought to rest against the shared headstone. Letting her bare fingertips trace the engraving of his father’s name on impulse, she stood beside her husband once more and took his hand in her own.

There was nothing to be heard but the thin skirl of the wind. Their frozen breaths curled together wispily in the air. The impenetrable valance of clouds veiled even the faintest rays of late winter sunlight, and for an instant, it almost seemed they were the only two souls on earth.

“I wish I could have known them.”

To Elizabeth’s own ears, even her soft-spoken utterance sounded much too loud for this place, this moment.

Darcy bent his head towards her, and suddenly there was the feel of his wet lashes pressed to her neck. She reached up to stroke his hair with soothing, featherlike passes of her fingers while her other arm encircled his back to hold him to her tightly.

When he spoke at last, his voice was nothing more than a whisper. “So do I.”


	8. Everything She Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired almost entirely from the following stanzas of W.H. Auden's poem, "Lady":
> 
> Cross the silent empty ballroom,  
> Doubt and danger past;  
> Blow the cobwebs from the mirror  
> See yourself at last.
> 
> Put your hand behind the wainscot,  
> You have done your part;  
> Find the penknife there and plunge it  
> Into your false heart.  
> 

She gazed around the deserted ballroom, harkening the faint rattle of the last departing carriages against the cobblestones. Instead of being left with the usual sense of satisfaction at the culmination of another soirée hosted for the ton, she only felt cold, only saw the gaudy finery and extravagance that surrounded her, but could not touch her.

Not anymore, at least.

She was at an utter loss as to why things should be any different now.

When she secured the proposal that was her affidavit into this life, she had been more than delighted with herself. It was a far better conquest than her sister had made. He was quite older than she was, but he was wealthy and respectable, did not drink to excess and was discreet, and he was received into the best circles society had to offer. Her every requisite in a match had been met, so what more could she need?

The state of marriage had, of course, entailed unsavory and degrading duties she was obligated to endure, though she pled a headache whenever she thought she could manage it to be spared them. Yet soon enough, when they resulted in the much-desired heir, his attentions declined drastically, and she was relieved.

From then on, her husband spent a great deal more time at his club, or at the very least sequestered in his billiards room. So long as she had ample pin money to spend and free reign to orchestrate their social calendar, his indifference in spending time with her unless for appearances’ sake was of little concern. He did regard their son, christened Jonathan for himself, with a bit more warmth, but even that had its limits. At the first hint of a wail or any show of a less than placid temperament, the infant would be shunted back to his nurse and dismissed until the next time it struck his fancy to have the boy in his presence.  

She herself had almost no hand in raising her only child; that was a job for the servants. Really, she showed very little interest in him at all, except to have him brought out and exhibited for a quarter of an hour or so when the society ladies came to call. When he was older and attending Eton, she did on occasion wonder at the inexplicable twinge she would feel when Jonathan wrote to ask more often than not whether he could spend his holidays in Nottinghamshire with her brother, his wife, and their three children. Nonetheless, she would reply in the positive, save if his father wished him home, summarily dismiss it from her thoughts, and return to planning tea or some other pressing engagement she was to have with Lady So-and-So.  

Now, Jonathan was in his final year at Cambridge and she rarely saw him. She did not know what kind of man her son was, what his interests were, how he spent his time, and it disturbed her every so often to think of it. It also rankled her more than she could say that he continued to prefer to spend time with the Bingleys—and undoubtedly by extension the Darcys as well—at Verburry than at home.

Her husband had retired for the night long before, and as she reached her own rooms, she paused before the looking glass. There were shocks of silver shot through her dark hair, rather less than would be expected for a woman of her age, but she took care to hide them by proxy of whatever coiffures and headdresses happened to be in fashion just the same. Her high-sculpted cheekbones were emphasized with a generous application of rouge and her general complexion was still clear, with the exception of a few sagging wrinkles around her mouth. Her lips seemed to purse inherently under this scrutiny, making the lines appear deeper. The dress she was wearing, an elaborate affair of heavy brocade and Andalusian sleeves, was one she had made especially for the evening at the finest modiste London had to offer, and her throat, her wrists, any skin left exposed was dripping with jewels.

All in all, she should have been pleased with what she saw, but the only thing Caroline Seward, née Bingley, could feel as she looked upon her own reflection was detached, hollow, and a sort of bitter disappointment that welled up between her teeth until it tasted like a tarnished shilling. She blinked as though she did not recognize what the looking glass was showing her, then brought a hand up to her own cheek as if seeing herself at last.

The sudden realization that there was the same air of garish artificiality about herself that had struck her about the ballroom décor crept upon her before she could stop it.

She turned away, pretending none of it would matter in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I was surprised by the appalling lack of Elizabeth and Darcy in this one too. The _frak_?
> 
> This is my personal interpretation of Caroline's "comeuppance," as it were. No public set downs or humiliation, no spinsterhood or barrenness or even horrific death. Just the lonely, shallow existence that she always aspired to, caught up in her own materialism and inflated sense of self-worth until it dawns upon her that she's miserable, but it's too late and she's too proud to do anything about it. It's really the worst fate that I can think of for her, or anyone.


	9. Nothing More Than Propriety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I learned from _Pride and Prejudice_ : If it looks like an arrogant bastard and acts like an arrogant bastard, then say hello your future husband.

Darcy fixed himself into a corner of the room, just far enough from the crush to observe without being paid much mind in turn.

If his eyes seemed to return to one individual more particularly than the rest, it was certainly not something he would profess, least of all to himself.  
  
As he was not being questioned on the matter by his conscience or otherwise, he felt himself at liberty to continue following the pair of fine eyes as they made their way across the ballroom of Netherfield. Their unguarded vibrancy while admiring an adornment here or alighting upon a friend there captivated him in a way that he could not explain, for the feeling was as alien to him as it was exhilarating.

He was not, however, permitted to indulge in this pursuit as singularly as he would have wished. Several times, he was approached by a few of the braver—or rather, the more brazen—residents of the neighborhood and subsequently forced to uphold his end in insipid conversation. All attempts concluded in the same fashion, with his utter discomfort and propensity for reserve allowing silence to eventually reign until the intruding party withdrew to leave him to himself again.   
  
When at last he was free of the attentions of Mrs Long, Bingley was motioning the players to take up their instruments for the first set. Darcy watched as his beaming friend then ushered a serene Miss Bennet onto the dance floor, trailed by other couples who joined the queue, among them Miss Elizabeth.

His glance quickly left her to see with whom she had partnered. It was no one he recognized, but the man provoked his ill will almost immediately. He stared far too openly at Miss Elizabeth, both his eyes and his hands lingering indecently on her person. Elizabeth herself looked miserable to be in his company, an expression made all the more unmistakable as the dance began. As an onlooker, Darcy’s degree of embarrassment on her behalf was acute as the man bungled his way through practically every maneuver. He could only imagine her own mortification and so was scarcely surprised when she fled the floor the moment the music ended without waiting for her hapless companion to attend her.

“They are well suited, are they not?”

Darcy averted his eyes from where Elizabeth—Miss Elizabeth—was speaking with her sister and Bingley to discover Caroline at his side.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you,” he said coldly.

Caroline would not be dissuaded by feigned ignorance. With an unbecoming shade of schadenfreude marring features that might otherwise have been considered handsome, she went on, “I was only remarking that your dear Miss Eliza and her cousin boast the same level of skill in dance, among other attributes, I am sure.”

_Her cousin?_ Darcy was careful not to let his countenance reflect his astonished distaste. 

“But then, country breeding and manners are so separate from our own. I suppose no one noticed save we who know better.” Her hand wrapped around the sleeve of his coat as if he had proffered it to support her. “Perhaps those of us who were taught the art _properly_ in town could show these simpler folk how it is meant to be done?”

Her hint was as subtle as it was devoid of venom.

“Perhaps,” Darcy rejoined, “and I am certain Mr Hurst would be willing to oblige you.”

The flush of success that had come over her when he began his reply rapidly degenerated to one of poorly concealed peevishness. With a curt nod, she released him and stalked off to the other side of the hall, leaving Darcy to experience guilt and vindication over his behavior. 

Alone once more, his gaze unconsciously swept the ballroom. When he found his unacknowledged quarry, he nearly choked.

It was a long and terrible moment before Darcy regained enough of his senses to realize that the man in regimentals who was escorting Elizabeth to the center of the room for a dance was not, in fact, Wickham. He could see from this new angle that the officer’s hair was lighter than that of his childhood friend, his frame stockier. As the spike of adrenaline which had flooded his being gradually ebbed, he released a shaky breath, intensely grateful in that moment that Wickham had not come. Although it was a dubious hope to entertain, and a more foolish one still, Darcy wanted to believe that Wickham’s absence meant that he would leave Elizabeth— _all the women of Meryton_ , he reiterated firmly—be, would not dare try anything with him so near.  

He focused again on the dancers as they glided to and fro, determined Wickham would not lay waste to his peace of mind anymore to-night. Elizabeth went lightly tripping past him at that moment, one dusky, loose curl springing temptingly along the white column of her neck. A pleasant, heady sort of madness seized Darcy as he wondered just how it would feel against his bare fingertips if he were to reach out and touch that errant lock—

Heat rose to his cheeks and he clenched his teeth. What had come over him? That was no way to think of a lady, the daughter of a gentleman no less, especially one to whom he could make no promises. How could he condemn Wickham’s debauchery and yield to such coarse reveries in all but the same line of thought?

He was in still somewhere between shock and self-rebuke when he was caught by her smile. He had taken notice some time ago that Elizabeth’s— _Miss Elizabeth’s,_ he hissed to himself—smiles were very different from the kind he saw in his circles. Hers were true, with a blend of archness and sweetness that set her eyes afire and gave the impression that a laugh could not be far behind, as though a smile were insufficient to contain the magnitude of happiness of which she was capable. It was a smile she now directed at the soldier across from her.

Darcy felt an irrational but sharp stab of...something. He would have called it displeasure, but for the fact that it smarted more of—of jealousy. The idea unsettled him. She was a nobody, an impertinent country miss who was intelligent and passionate, and, yes, he would admit it to himself, very pretty, but she had nothing to offer in a substantial way. For all intents, her family lived in genteel poverty, yet poverty it was nonetheless. He could not allow himself to become attached, could hardly forge such a connection with—   
  
Darcy stiffened, his sharp intake of breath easily lost in the din of the crowd.   
  
Attached? A connection? Of what was he thinking? He could not be so far gone as to be contemplating _marrying_ the girl. It was possible there might be some stirrings of attraction, but he would overcome that with a little time and distance.   
  
Right then and there, he resolved to think of Elizabeth Bennet no more. She could be nothing to him.

…except perhaps an acquaintance. Surely he was master enough of himself for that? He knew what he was about.   
  
The set concluded, and while Elizabeth was being led from the floor, Darcy was suddenly struck with the notion that she might agree to dance with him now. He should at least socialize a little, and she was unengaged at present. There was nothing in a dance; it was only good etiquette to stand up with an acquaintance or two at these sorts of events. Bingley had seen to the eldest Miss Bennet, though he thought to himself in exasperation that there was little to do with etiquette about it. Why should he not do the same with Miss Elizabeth? What could be more natural?   
  
It was the polite thing to do, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Darcy as a proud, conflicted jerk is _fun_. I can just imagine Jane Austen bent over her escritoire, repressing wicked laughs as she wrote more and more haughty and ridiculous things for him to say. God knows I was.


	10. Adventures in Sherwood Forest

“Show yourself, rapscallion!”

Darcy turned to his wife. “ _Rapscallion_?” he mouthed soundlessly.

If he expected a reply, he was to be disappointed. Elizabeth was far too intent on smothering the bout of laughter that his bewildered expression had provoked in her to offer one.

She had hardly contained herself when Elena came stumbling upon their hiding place tucked behind the low garden wall.

“Aha!” she cried, excitement making her eyes every bit as bright as his wife’s.

In moments like this, Darcy found the likeness between them staggering.

Elena had taken after her mama in more than looks. She too dearly loved to laugh, and almost as soon as she could take three steps together, there was a stubbornness about her— _independence_ , Elizabeth liked to call it—when she put her mind to something. Though he supposed in that, he had to bear _some_ responsibility. For all that she resembled Elizabeth, a streak of himself was there to gleam through.

“Little John, Merry Men,” Elena called, “come quick, I’ve found them!”

An answering shout reached them just before her brothers did.

At six, Christopher was entirely his father’s son in appearance, from his piercing gray eyes to his mannerisms, but he had his mother’s open disposition. Even now, he was struggling to keep the wide grin which kept displacing his deliberately fixed scowl in check.

Then there was Benjamin. While his brother’s and sister’s hair would lay in some semblance of order, Elizabeth ruefully claimed his own ungodly mess of curls as her own doing. Of their children, he alone had inherited the Prussian-blue eyes of the Fitzwilliam line. They were Georgiana’s eyes, Darcy’s mother’s eyes, and they were often seen peeking out shyly from behind his mother’s skirts while he sucked his thumb for comfort with all the abandon a four-year-old could afford. Like his father, he was not easy in the company of strangers. At the moment, however, he was beaming, looking merry enough himself to more than compensate that he was all the band of Merry Men that Robin Hood and Little John had to their names at present.

“Prince John,” said Elena, her fingers bunched and aloft as if she were wielding a bow and arrow, “we will fight you unless you unhand Maid Marian and…” Her face scrunched up in momentary confusion, but it smoothed out again swiftly as she decided, “…and her sister!”

Darcy hastily turned the beginnings of his laugh into a growling sort of sneer so as not to spoil the game. His eyes flickered to the baby cradled in Elizabeth’s arms.

Not quite a year old, Adrianna had come last of all and inexplicably red-haired. Between him and Elizabeth, one or the other of them must have had Irish blood coursing through their veins from a branch of ancestry long forgotten or covered up. With the exception of her eyes, which were Elizabeth’s in shape and color, Darcy swore Adrianna looked exactly as Georgiana had at that age.

The smile tugging at his lips was not to be repressed. Some days, he could not help but marvel at the strange, wonderful blend that made up their children.

Lost to tender thoughts as he was, he suddenly recollected that he had a part to play. He hardened his countenance and spat, “Traitors, all of you! I am _king_!” For good measure, he grabbed hold of Elizabeth’s arm and pretended to draw his invisible sword from a sheath at his hip. “Kings do not fight with commoners and outlaws, and you will pay for your insolence. Off with their heads!”

It all would have been much more convincing had Adrianna not chosen that moment to gurgle and shriek at her papa’s silliness.

Yet Elena was not to be distracted from her duties as Robin Hood under any circumstances, and with her holler of _have at thee_ , she and the boys dashed forward. Grossly unbalanced as it was, the skirmish ended in short order.

Darcy fell to the ground in defeat, sending dandelion fluff scattering to the wind. He clutched at his chest and groaned his agonies before going still. After a minute of silence, he cracked open his eyes to find three little faces peering over him uncertainly.

Wide-eyed, Benjamin asked, “Papa is hurt?” 

“No,” Darcy whispered back conspiratorially, immediately letting his eyes fall shut again.

“We beat bad Prince John!” cheered Christopher, sending himself, his brother, and his sister into a victorious frenzy of dancing and giggling and singing.

Elizabeth knelt and leaned down over her husband then, the sun at her back making her appear dark to his eyes. “Poor Prince John,” she murmured, a smirk on her lips. “Will you recover?”

Darcy heaved a sigh. “I hardly know. How does one recover from losing the crown of England _and_ being soundly beaten by their children in the course of a single day?”

The mischievous twinkle that shone in her eyes was his only warning.

It was Adrianna’s string of babbling that caught Christopher’s attention mid-celebration. He looked around, only for his features to rearrange themselves into a perfectly scandalized expression.

“Maid Marian never kissed Prince John!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, I actually managed to put some dialogue in this one.


	11. Tidings of Comfort and Joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know you're probably way too into _Pride and Prejudice_ when you sketch out detailed timelines as reference for your fanfictions.

“But I am not sleepy yet.”

“No, of course not,” Jane replied in a soothing voice, the gentle upturn at the corner of her mouth the only tell of her amusement as Charlie forced his drooping eyelids open again. She smoothed a lock of hair from his forehead. “But you want to be rested to celebrate Christmas with your cousins tomorrow, do you not?”

“Yes,” he admitted around a pouting lower lip.

With a press of her lips to his cheek, Jane whispered, “It won’t be long until morning. Good night, darling.”

“Good night, Mama,” he mumbled back, eyes already closed.

Silent as a shadow, Jane slipped out into the passage and crossed to the room opposite of Charlie’s.

All was quiet and still in the nursery as she leaned over the cradle where her eldest daughter slept. Diana’s hair fell in soft, dark waves across her pillow. Her third birthday was fast approaching, and too soon for Jane’s liking, she would be too much grown to sleep here.

In the bassinet, nearly swallowed by her blanket, was the youngest Bingley. Hardly a month old, it was even now clear that Sophia’s coloring would be contrariwise to her sister’s. Her head was crowned with golden fuzz, and while Diana had inherited her own hazel eyes, Jane was certain that Sophia’s would not change from their present shade of deep brown.

Three little ones in the space of five years. She would have never predicted such happiness for herself.

Already so near, she wandered through the guest wing of the house to ensure that all was well. Elizabeth’s own brood was fast asleep, as was Alexander, Mary’s two-year-old son, and Kitty’s eight-month-old daughter, Penelope. Jane smiled as she caught sight of Benjamin with his thumb firmly tucked into his mouth. Able to account for the tranquility of all the children, if only for the moment, she returned to the parlour room.

Though the hour was not so late, Mr and Mrs Bennet had retired for the night, weary from their journey from Longbourn to Verburry. Mary, Kitty, their husbands, her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, and Georgiana were still awake and engaged in some spirited discourse or other before the fire.

It did Jane’s tender heart well to see so many of those she loved together and thriving.

There were, however, those who were missing from their merry party.

It was a glad reason which kept the Fitzwilliams away, for Richard and his wife had welcomed their second son into the world only days ago. As they could not travel from home, the Colonel’s parents and his brother and his family had gone to celebrate with them and to meet the newest of their number.

Caroline had no such justification to excuse her own family’s absence. The only explanation she had offered in her carelessly penned and unforgivably short missive to her brother, received just yesterday, was that she and her husband preferred to spend the holiday in town preparing for the Season. Had Jane a different nature, some of her thoughts on the matter, and really on her sister-in-law as a rule, might have been deemed unkind, especially when she saw how it pained Charles. Her husband had not seen his nephew for above half a year, and it grieved her to see his sorrow over missing so much of John’s infancy.

It was a pain she well understood. Though it distressed Jane to think it of her own sister, an invitation to spend Christmas at Verburry had not been extended to Lydia at all. The association between the Wickhams and the rest of the family had grown worse, not better, with time. The latest scandal was that Wickham had been caught in several compromising situations with other women throughout London. What was almost worse, the indifference that had long taken root in and choked the Wickhams’ marriage like so many weeds meant that Lydia did not seem to care about his unfaithfulness in the least. As was made clear in her infrequent letters to all her sisters, her wild behavior was as it ever was, and she continued carousing with her usual dubious acquaintances without any concern for her reputation.

It was an embarrassment, if not a shock, made that much worse by the fact that there were the Wickham children to consider. Lydia had not quite proven herself an unfit mother to Leah and George yet, but Elizabeth and Mary had been prepared to sweep in before it ever came to pass. Though Jane’s own confidence in Lydia dwindled with every thoughtless letter, only her petition on Lydia’s behalf that she would never harm or neglect her children stayed their sisters’ hands. As muddled as circumstances were, however much she and her sisters—most particularly Kitty— might wish to see their niece and nephew, it was impossible.

But Jane had not meant for her thoughts to stray into such gloomy waters, and she scolded herself for allowing it while she was surrounded by so much goodness.

Charles’s laughter drew her attention to where he was partially concealed in the alcove on the far side of the room, and she joined him there.

Beaming, he said to her, “Come see. I do believe your sister must have tired of seeing Darcy brooding upon his dislike of all things snow and winter.”

She had wondered where Elizabeth and Darcy had disappeared to. Jane glanced out the window where he had gestured and instantly understood her husband’s near boyish glee. In the dim torchlight, she could just make out the snow stuck to the back of Darcy’s hair and his hat where lay on the ground, clearly knocked straight off his head. His back was to the house, so she could not see his countenance, but she could just make out Elizabeth’s. A fine layer of snow caked her gloves, and she was speaking with a devilish smirk playing on her lips.

If Jane had not seen what happened next with her own eyes, she may not have believed it. One moment, Darcy was brushing the snow from his hair, and the next he was stooping to gather a fresh handful of it and running towards Elizabeth in one fluid motion. Her sister’s muffled shriek of surprise could be heard through the frosted windowpane, but all else was without sound as she watched him give chase around the grounds, the pair of them obviously laughing, and eventually he caught her up in his arms. Then, Darcy cupped Elizabeth’s face in his hands and kissed her.

Jane looked away; they deserved to share this moment in privacy. She had hardly turned when she felt fingers tipping up her chin and a pair of warm lips suddenly against her own.

Charles’s grin was wider than ever when he broke away, and she knew her own expression must have mirrored his as he murmured to her, “Happy Christmas, sweetheart.”


	12. Into the Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, I just stare at the cryptic story notes I leave myself and wonder exactly what the hell I was going for.

Not very many months into their marriage, they had their first real argument as husband and wife. 

Truth be told, with temperaments and a telling beginning such as theirs, Elizabeth had expected it to happen much sooner.

It started in the way quarrels usually do, sparked by something so inconsequential that it was promptly forgotten in the years to come. At the time, however, needled pride provoked them both to words that were harsh and scorching and unknown to yet be harbored in either of their hearts until it went too far.

She knew from the shock that overspread his features that he wished the words unsaid the moment they were uttered, but her anger burned too hot for it to be of any concern.

“No,” said Darcy, frantic, “no, I—”

He clutched at her wrist as if to anchor her to him, but she, unable to be subjected to his touch just then, wrenched out of his hold. It was petty of her, but in that moment, she wanted to hurt him as he had her. Elizabeth had never claimed to be without fault.   

His expression contorted into something achingly childlike before it closed off entirely.

“Not another word,” she warned, her voice astonishingly steady considering how erratic she felt the beat of her heart to be. “We both of us have said quite enough, I think.”  

She left him standing alone in the music room.

.*.

Georgiana was away visiting with Lord and Lady Matlock for a fortnight, and so there was no other companion present at supper to compel them to act as if nothing was amiss. They hardly even looked at each other as they picked at their food.

There was an instance where their eyes caught by chance across the table. He would have spoken then, had opened his mouth, but Elizabeth deliberately dropped her gaze, having no wish to hear anything her husband might say. Her meaning was perfectly understood as the unbroken quiet proved.

She retired once supper ended though she was the furthest possible thing from tired. When Lily arrived shortly after to attend to her, Elizabeth not unkindly dismissed her, feeling herself unfit for any company. She prepared for bed on her own as she and Jane had always done, absently twisting her hair between her fingers and into a thick plait.

The solution to managing her temper had always been fairly simple at Longbourn. Silence and solitude were easy enough to come by along the surrounding country lanes there; she could walk for miles without encountering a soul. Even when the weather did not allow her that haven, she could at least hide away in her room until she could think reasonably and was herself again. She had shared the room with Jane, yes, but her elder sister, dear creature that she was, understood Elizabeth’s manner of working through the brunt of her feelings and let her be.

The lateness of the hour precluded her preferred method. For the first time since Pemberley had become her home, she wondered if she had been too hasty in giving up her private bedchambers.

Elizabeth conceded her attempt at letter writing to be a hopeless case nearly as soon as she had begun and blew out the candle upon her bedside table. Thin wisps of smoke were still coiling from the wick when Darcy came into the room.

Eyes closed, she listened to him moving in the dark as he readied himself for bed. She felt the mattress dip as he slipped in beside her. Everything was still then.

“Elizabeth?”

She considered answering, struck by the timbre of his voice; she did not, in the end.

The deep sigh that followed affected her more than she cared to admit.

.*.

Mrs Bennet’s wailing could be heard throughout the whole of the house, only occasionally overtaken by Kitty and Lydia’s giggling and the jarringly flat notes of a tormented piano.

“Hill, oh, Hill! What am I to do with the willful, wretched girl? She will be the death of me! Or worse—our ruin!”

“Mama,” Jane soothed, “I am certain it will all turn out to be some great misunderstanding. You must be calm.”

“And what is there to misunderstand, Jane, I ask you?” snapped Mrs Bennet. “Your sister chased away Mr Darcy, a man of ten-thousand a year, if need I remind you.”

“No need at all, Mrs Bennet,” Mr Bennet said as he rose to pour himself another drink. “I do believe that when I am ancient and have lost most of my faculties and nearly all of my senses, though I might not recall my own name, I will most assuredly remember the precise income of my son-in-law.”

The piano chords and redoubled cackling of her youngest sisters jumbled gratingly in the air.

“ _Son-in-law_!” his wife all but shrieked. “Tell me, can we still refer to him as such when he has, for all intents and purposes, cast off his ungrateful wife? It’s like I have always said, girls: it’s she who holds her tongue that finds and keeps a husband.”    

Mr Bennet snorted even as Mrs Bennet buried her face in her handkerchief and bawled.

Mary, banging away at the piano yet, decreed, “Silence is a virtue all members of our sex would do well to possess, for even when we have lost all else, silence can still be had.”

This, of course, sent Kitty and Lydia into a fresh wave of hysterics while their mother sobbed louder.

The noise of it all rose to such a pitch that Elizabeth’s head pounded with it, unable to distinguish one sound from the other.

.*.

Elizabeth awoke with a start.

It took her a moment to realize where she was and a moment more to feel the warm, reassuring weight of her husband’s arms around her. She cursed her body as a traitor of the weakest sort for seeking out the comfort of him instinctively in the night.

Carefully so as not to wake him, Elizabeth rose and dressed for the day. Her hand was upon door handle when he spoke from behind her.

“How long, exactly, do you intend for us to go on like this?”

Her anger at him still simmered beneath her skin, and the hint of acrimony in his question acted as kindling. An unkind retort sprang readily to her lips, but she tamped down on it.

When he saw she would neither answer nor turn to face him, he tried a different tack. “Where do you go so early?”

“To visit with some of the tenants,” she told him dispassionately. “I promised Mrs Branson that I would go to see how her daughter fared. You need not wait for me to take dinner or supper.” She started to open the door.                                                                                                        

“Elizabeth, don’t, not with this unresolved between us, please!” She hesitated on the threshold as he pleaded. “Will you not even give me the opportunity to apologize?”

At that, she shut the door a little too forcefully before whirling on her heel. “And why would you apologize for something you said with such _conviction_ , Fitzwilliam? You are not one to go back on your word.”

“What of the things you said?” he replied heatedly. “Did you mean even half of them? Any part of it?”

Her reluctance to meet his gaze, edged with repentance, was confirmation enough that he had caught her out.  

“Do not think I make light of it. There is no explanation I can offer to excuse myself even of empty words spoken in anger. I bitterly, bitterly regret them, and I am so sorry.”

Sleep-rumpled and serious, hopeful and agitated, he stood before her, a wealth of contradictions in the body of a man.

“So am I,” she told him. “I said cruel, foolish things, and I have acted childishly, besides. Forgive me?”

Elizabeth could never be certain after that which of them had moved forward first or whether they both did at once, but it hardly mattered. They were soon tangled in each other, breathing apologies between kisses that were soft and tender.

“This will never do,” he murmured some time later, toying with one of her curls as they lay close together.

She lifted a questioning eyebrow, taking in the self-deprecating grin beginning at the corner of his mouth which seemed at odds with his comment.

“Whatever will our incentive be _not_ to argue so fiercely if this is how it concludes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Bennet did in fact paraphrase Ursula from _The Little Mermaid_. I regret nothing (is an example of a thing I can't say).


	13. Where the Past Years Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's episode of _Sesame Street_ is brought to you by the letter V, sleep deprivation, and the number 18.

“Mr Carrington to see you, Mr Darcy.”

Darcy turned from his place by the study window, looking grim. “Yes, send him in.”

When the footman disappeared again, he eyed the remainder of his drink before downing it, steeling himself for what he was all too certain was coming.

The second knock at his door in as many minutes announced the arrival of his guest.

The acquaintance between the Darcy and Carrington families went back decades, if not longer, but it was not until these last few years that the man standing before Darcy had garnered his particular attention. For his part, Anthony Carrington was an amiable sort of gentleman, soft-spoken in a manner that gave the impression of neither feebleness nor conceit. At four and twenty, he was master of a property in southern Derbyshire. His father had unexpectedly succumbed to apoplexy just the year before, leaving his eldest son and heir responsible for the management of a not inconsiderable estate and the care of his mother and two younger brothers far sooner than was meant to be.

Carrington’s lot in life reminded Darcy very much of his own, but all the respect and warmth he was disposed to feel towards the young man was mitigated by the motive Carrington had in requesting this private meeting with him.

Darcy had been dreading this moment for some time.  

“Good afternoon, Mr Darcy,” greeted Carrington, stepping into the study and closing the door behind himself. Belatedly, he noticed the room’s other occupant. “And to you, Colonel Fitzwilliam. I had not expected to see you here.”

“No, I would wager you hadn’t,” Richard replied with a smile that was somehow both convivial and menacing at once. Darcy would have to ask him how to manage that some time.

“I hope you do not mind that I asked the Colonel to join us,” Darcy said. It was not in fact a question.

If he had not been watching for it, he might have dismissed the flare of panic across Carrington’s countenance as a trick of the light.

“Not at all.”  

He gestured for Carrington to take the seat in front of his desk while he sank into his own behind it. Richard was already elegantly sprawled in the armchair at his right, facing their guest.

“What brings you to Pemberley, Mr Carrington?”

The confusion that sprang into Carrington’s eyes, the way he glanced at Richard as if in supplication, was nearly enough to make Darcy sorry. Nearly.

“Surely…surely you must know why?”

With a perverse sort of pleasure he made no attempt to disguise, Richard told him, “I am afraid my cousin and I haven’t the faintest idea. We are all suspense.”

Only the crackle of the logs in the fire kept the room from being plunged into total silence for almost a minute.

“I am in love with Miss Darcy,” Carrington said at last in a tone that was low but firm. “I have asked her to marry me, and she has accepted. I have come here to-day to request your consent and your blessing.”

It was Darcy’s turn to quietly regard the man in front of him. Carrington’s cheeks were a little flushed, and the wariness in his expression had cleared. There was no place for it with the passion and steadfastness that suffused his features. If Darcy had doubted the sincerity of his feelings, there could be no question of them now. Yet he had not doubted that there was true affection between them, not for some time now. No, his difficulties lay somewhere else entirely, but the answers Darcy needed were not Carrington’s to give.

There were, however, other things to be asked. “You do not think it too soon for you to marry? You are young, Mr Carrington, and though you shoulder duties heavier than many a man has at your age and carried them well, you still know very little of the world. How can you be sure in your decision?” 

“Mr Darcy,” he began carefully, “I have come to know Miss Darcy these five years, and in that time, my respect and admiration for her has only increased. My feelings are so far beyond anything I have known either before or since, there is no mistaking them for any passing infatuation.”

Carrington swallowed. “You ask me how I can be sure in my decision? I tell you freely that I have considered it for the last two years. When my father died, it was not for me to put myself ahead of my family and act on my own desires, but there was not a day that passed when I did not think of her and our future. After all this time, I know my mind and my heart, and there is nothing I can claim to have ever wanted so much as to be able to call myself her husband. I shall do everything in my power to make her as happy as I know she will make me. I know less of the world than some, that is true, but I have seen enough to know that even if I were to search this entire earth, I could never find her equal.” 

Darcy would not have been able to put words to what he was feeling then if he tried. There was a tightness in his chest, as though his heart was both bursting and breaking, and he wondered if this was what he was meant to feel.

“Well,” Richard cleared his throat suspiciously before continuing, “he’s persuaded me to grant my half of the consent.”

“And mine,” said Darcy, finding his voice, “You have my consent, and my blessing with it.” There was more he wanted to say, but he trusted himself to articulate only a very little of it without making a fool of himself just then. Instead, he extended a hand to Carrington, a smile curling his lips as he did. “Come again to-morrow. We can talk about particulars then. She will be waiting for you and I will not keep you longer.”

“Thank you.” His smile growing wider by the second, Carrington seemed dazed, repeating, “Thank you. I promise to take care of her as long as I live.”

Darcy only nodded when Carrington released his hold to shake Richard’s hand as well. He strode quickly from the room, leaving the door wide open in his haste. 

Darcy sagged into his chair the moment he was away, tipping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut. That had been nearly as nerve-wracking as when he was on the opposing end of this ordeal. Then again, his memories of trying to convince Mr Bennet that he loved his daughter had always been a blur at best, but he was quite certain the man had believed him to be in jest the first few minutes of that interview.  

The clink of ice against glass reminded him of Richard’s presence, and he opened his eyes to find his tumbler refilled and waiting for him on the desk.

His cousin raised his own glass in his direction before putting it to his lips. “I thought that went rather well,” and Darcy was so far gone, he snorted. “He is an excellent match for Georgiana,” Richard went on, “and you know as well as I that her heart has been his for some time now.”

“I do.” Darcy’s smile was a soft, melancholy thing.

Since their introduction, he had watched Georgiana come to trust, then befriend, and slowly fall in love with Carrington over the years. He was happier for his sister than he would ever be capable of expressing; he had always hoped she might find what he had with Elizabeth. Still, there was an ache inside him that, while blunted by joy, was an ache just the same. For so long there had been just the two of them relying on only each other that to let her go to make her own way in the world and build a life with another felt keenly like loss.

“Come now, Darcy, chin up. If nothing else, this was good practice, and I am _more_ than happy to offer my services again once the young men start snooping about your Elena.”

Darcy blanched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't sleep, I write.


	14. Just As You Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, but just, _Darcy babies_ , okay?

Elizabeth had explored all the usual hideaways—the library’s secluded window seat, the disused cupboard tucked away beneath the staircase in the west wing, behind the embroidered tapestry in the gallery—to no avail.

With the established sanctuaries which she knew of exhausted, she began to search more broadly. By the time she had reached the south passage, she could not help but mark that Lady Catherine’s pontificating could be heard, albeit in a muffled sort of way, even in this part of the house. She suppressed a sigh.

Really, she supposed she ought to be grateful that her husband’s aunt now managed to constrain her vitriol to what were rather harmless subjects on the whole. Lady Catherine had never truly accepted a country nobody as the new mistress of Pemberley, but she had learned well enough that if she wished to remain in her nephew’s good graces, she must be courteous to his wife. And after all, it was Elizabeth who had softened Darcy to reconcile with his aunt after more than three years of estrangement, though Lady Catherine knew not to whom she was indebted. Undoubtedly, she imagined that such a lengthy separation from his mother’s sister had naturally been too much for her dear nephew to bear.

The abrupt silence hanging in the air could only mean that Lady Catherine had paused just long enough to either take breath or tea. Elizabeth’s light step faltered as she considered in which direction to go next. She was becoming a little anxious.

Just as she started to wonder if she would do better to enlist Darcy’s help, a sudden clatter quite near to where she stood startled her.

She followed the sound until it died away, only to find herself before the doors to the conservatory.

She had not ventured far into the sunwashed room before she found him at last, curled up among the lemon trees and staring out the windows. He had yet to notice that he was no longer alone.

“Benjamin.”

Though her call to him had been gentle, the six-year-old boy gave a squeak of surprise, his start upsetting the empty watering cans at his feet and producing the very noise which had drawn her here. As it almost always did, the perpetually windswept look of his hair nearly teased her mouth into a smile, her relief making the impulse that much stronger, but his countenance quelled it. He had obviously depended upon not being discovered here, but there was something else in his reaction that could not but betray itself to a mother’s heart.

Elizabeth arranged her skirts about her so that she could kneel on the ground beside him. Benjamin hugged his knees more closely to his chest.

“Benjamin, why are you hiding?”

“I’m…I’m not,” came his reply.

“No?” she urged softly, studying him attentively.

So she would not see how his lip trembled and his blue-eyed gaze unexpectedly filled with tears, he tried to look away, but Elizabeth caught his chin with a tender hand.

That same hand moved to stroke his hair back. “Darling,” she murmured, “what has upset you so?” When he would not answer, only sat fidgeting and looking ashamed, she ventured a guess. “Did Aunt Catherine frighten you?”

Benjamin’s glassy eyes went wide and panicked before avoiding her own entirely. “I cannot tattle, Mama.”

There was no denying that his words elicited a twinge deep in her breast. “It is not tattling to tell me or Papa when something has hurt you.” A heartbeat passed, then another, but still he said nothing. “Please tell me. It makes me sad to see _you_ sad.”

Her son’s eyes flickered back to hers, and this time, he could not seem to tear them away again. The tears welled higher and a few spilled over. “He-he did not mean it,” he mumbled, “not really.”

_He?_ Elizabeth dried his cheeks with her fingertips. “What didn’t he mean?”

Almost crossly, his knuckles scrubbed roughly at his own face. “When you and Papa left after breakfast, Aunt Catherine was asking me all kinds of things. I tried to answer, but she makes me so nervous and I did not say as much as she wanted me to. She called me a ‘strange child’ and went away.” Benjamin’s voice wavered dangerously, “Christopher laughed at me and called me a baby. He said Grandmama Bennet thinks I am strange too, that he heard her say at Christmastime that it is a shame I am not more like him and Elena.”

She was stricken. “Oh, darling—”

His face crumpled. “I try to be brave, I do!” he sobbed. “I cannot help that I do not like to speak with people I don’t know, or…or…” The rest was lost to the force of his crying.

Elizabeth took him onto her lap, cradling him close while he continued to wet the calico of her dress with hot tears. She was grateful for the opportunity to get her own emotions back under her power, for a maelstrom of fury was battering at her heart. How _dare_ her mother speak so, and within hearing of any of her children? Mrs Bennet had regularly compared her own daughters in such a manner while they were growing up, particularly the two eldest, and it was only because Jane and Elizabeth were so close that their mother had not inadvertently fostered an animosity between them. But whether it was her mother’s intention or not, Elizabeth would not endure it to be done again among her own children—never. Of the four, Benjamin was the only one of them who was painfully shy, it was true, but for him to think it meant he was somehow worth less than the others made her want to weep with him.

Once his hiccupping and sniffling had quieted considerably, she loosened her embrace just enough to be able to see his tear-streaked face.

“Now,” she said, “you listen to me. What Grandmama Bennet said was _wrong_ , and it was wrong of Christopher to repeat it. He and I will have a talk about that.”

At that last part, Benjamin became visibly distressed. She knew what it cost him to admit what the elder brother who he adored had done. “No, he—”

Elizabeth soothed, “He is not in trouble, but he cannot be allowed speak to you that way.”

This calmed him somewhat, but he still looked miserable.

“Did you know,” she sank her tone as if she was imparting a great secret, “that Papa is also shy?”

“ _Papa_?” The absolute amazement of his expression was as if he would sooner believe that his father could fly.

“Yes, and Aunt Georgiana too. Many people are shy, and that is perfectly all right. Now that he is older, Papa is more comfortable with strangers, but even still, he does not find it so easy as someone like Uncle Bingley. If ever Papa needs help, I am right there with him, and I can help you too.” She framed her son’s face in her hands. “I would not change a thing about you, my sweet darling.”

Benjamin brightened for a moment, but that light was swiftly blown out. “But Elena and Christopher…”

“You are your own person, just as they are.”

“I am not special. Not like them,” said he.

Elizabeth willed away the sting of tears that rose behind her eyes.

“Of course you are.” She stooped to press a kiss to each of his eyelids; the lashes were yet damp. “You have the most beautiful blue eyes of anyone I have ever known.”

He tilted his head incredulously at her, but she was not finished.

“Just yesterday, Miss Ashcombe told me how impressed she was with how quickly you have learned to do your sums. When we play hide and seek, who is it that finds all the best spots?”

“…me?”

“You!” she declared with a smile, beginning to tickle him. His peal of laughter was chased by one of her own. “And your laugh? It is one of my favorite sounds in the entire world.”

Benjamin, beaming, threw his arms round her neck and squeezed tight, his nose pressed to his mama’s cheek.

“Always remember that Papa and I love you so very much,” she whispered in his ear, “just as you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second verse, same as the first.


	15. By the Light of Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that residual gunk that's left around the rim of a cotton candy maker dish? This is probably something like that.

Warm with sleep, Darcy awoke by degrees.

His first glimmer of awareness was of the weight and heat in his arms, which could only mean Elizabeth was still sound asleep. Slowly, without opening his eyes, he tightened his hold so she was nestled more closely to him. She sighed softly in her sleep and her breath fanned out against his bare skin.

The telltale burbles of dawn, with its chirruped birdsongs and distant echoes of the servants beginning their day, eventually trickled into his exhausted consciousness, but he had no intention whatsoever of moving. He treasured these rare, lazy mornings when there were no appointments to keep, no places to be other than right where he was.

For a time, he was perfectly content with just the feel and scent of his wife, burrowing deeper into her hair so that her curls teased his nose. Soon, however, his eyes became jealous with want and blinked open almost without his consent.

The sunshine forced him to squeeze them nearly shut in the next moment, but they adjusted to the brightness little by little until she seemed to be conjured from particles of incandescent light. His mouth tilted into a crooked smile as he took her in, devoting his attentions to each part which made up the whole of his Elizabeth as if he were a scholar of art studying one of da Vinci’s masterpieces. _She_ was a masterpiece. The delicate arch of her eyebrows, the tapered lines of her fingers, the dip of her waist chased by the gentle slope of her hip. He loved it all with such fervor and a touch of possessiveness that would once have made him suspect of his own gentlemanliness.

Now, it only made his fingers itch to trace her every curve until the feel and texture of her skin was committed indelibly to his memory, until he could map the constellation of beauty marks scattered across her body by heart.

The morning was theirs and the temptation too great.

As he sought the sensitive spot just behind her ear, she began to stir beneath him. His grin stretched wider and he caught her lobe between his teeth before continuing along the column of her throat, plying every inch that came under his lips with the same sort of sweet, tender kisses she woke him with each morning. 

When he paused in his languid explorations to drag his lower lip down her forehead and nose, his name was curling on her tongue. By that time, his restraint—whatever shards remained—shattered. He bent to capture her mouth in a searing kiss, focusing on her upper lip, then her full lower one, running his tongue deliberately across each as a groan rumbled in his chest. Elizabeth was awake now, surely, or her body was rising up to meet his of its own accord. His greedy hands, incapable of being idle, moved from the divot of her bellybutton to press at the small of her back. He could feel her fingers slipping up his spine and the nape of his neck to sink into his hair. He bit playfully at her chin and distracted himself momentarily by following the line of her jaw, returning over and again to her lips.

Finally, he broke away, though he could not keep himself from touching her in some manner. He nuzzled her nose with his, and with a gentle buss to the end of it, he hid his face in the smooth crook of her neck.  

“Good morning,” he murmured against her shoulder, his voice all gravel and repressed passion.

He shivered as the vibrations from her throaty reply of _mmm_ spilled into him. Peeking up almost shyly from his sanctuary, he saw her vivid eyes watching him while a lovely pink blush stole across her cheeks. He wanted to chase it with his tongue.

As if she could hear his thoughts, the sleepy smile on her kiss-flushed mouth adopted an impish edge.

Lazy mornings were, without question, one of Darcy’s favorite things in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your teeth's mortal enemy, your dentist's best friend.


	16. Take Courage, Wear It on Your Sleeve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t really know how to do this anymore, but I’m stubborn as all hell.

It began with a headache.

Nothing very terrible, Darcy averred when Elizabeth noticed he wasn’t quite himself as Elena practiced reading aloud to them that evening. Only a dull twinge behind his eyes. She would have fussed and clucked over him a little more had not Christopher and Benjamin’s make-believe battle between their toy soldiers devolved into genuine squabbling. The pair of them had been strangely churlish all day, and she and Darcy had stepped in more than once to break up the shrieking matches that flared up between them over nothing.

Elizabeth lifted a hand, wordlessly telling him to stay seated with Elena, and rose to intervene.

Her attempts to soothe their bitter tempers, which seemed to stem only in part from the newly one-legged soldier by their knees, were all but unavailing. But they were four and two years old, and if there were reasons more profound for their peevishness, they certainly weren’t capable of discerning them, let alone expressing them explicitly. Christopher rubbed angrily at the tears streaking his cheeks and stuck his tongue out at his brother, provoking Benjamin to let out a particularly indignant wail. As Elizabeth gently but firmly scolded that this was not how good little boys behaved, she saw Darcy wince from the corner of her eye.

“Fitzwilliam.” She waited for his eyes to meet hers. “To bed. We could all do with an early night. Miss Hart and I will take care of bedtime with the children.” 

Her accent brooked no arguments, so she thought nothing of it when her husband did not protest, only kissed her and the children good night. 

“But, Mama,” Elena pouted as her mother smoothed the quilt over her, “ _I_ was not being naughty. Can’t I please stay up?”

From the next room, Elizabeth could hear the nursemaid trying to coax her grumpy boys into their nightclothes. “I know, my darling, but Papa is very tired, and I think your brothers need some extra sleep so they aren’t so cross tomorrow.” She feathered a kiss at her daughter’s temple.  “But because you were mama’s very good girl today, you can keep reading your story until I come back to blow out your candle.”

Even with Miss Hart’s help, it was a struggle to settle the boys. But at last it was managed, Benjamin nuzzling the stuffed fox toy he had been inseparable from of late, and Christopher sprawled on his back and snoring lightly in a way that was so reminiscent of his father that she had to repress the laugh that wanted to bubble from her lips.

Elena was curled around her book and fast asleep when she returned. She slipped it out from under her hands before putting out the candle and retiring to her own rooms.

.*.

Elizabeth stretched as she felt the autumn morning’s sunlight warm on her cheek. By the time she managed to lift her heavy eyelids, she saw that Darcy was already awake beside her.

Her eyes were drifting shut again as she murmured, “How is your head this morning?” His answering hum was a raspy, listless thing and she wondered if he too was finding it difficult to shake the sleep that draped upon her like a thick winter cloak. “If you’re still feeling poorly, I’ll send to the apothecary for something.”     

When still no answer came, she forced her eyes open. “Fitzwilliam?”

He was staring back at her, but his eyes were glassy and unfocused. She pushed herself up onto one elbow, hovering over him. “Fitzwilliam?” she repeated, her voice sharp with burgeoning alarm. 

It seemed a prodigious effort for him to turn his head, and when his wandering gaze finally fixed on her once more, his expression was vaguely confused. “’lizbeth,” he slurred with a tongue that was clumsy and slow.   

Properly awake now, she could see the unnatural flush to his skin and how a few damp curls clung to his brow. She touched the back of her hand there.

He was _burning_. 

She hardly remembered leaving the bed, but suddenly found herself up and pulling on the bell cord. Her lady’s maid’s light knock to announce herself entering the room came much too quickly for her to have come in response to her mistress’s summons, but Elizabeth was frantic enough for that detail to escape her. 

“Lily,” she all but panted as she slipped into a sensible dress, “please have someone summon Dr Neil at once. And tell Mrs Reynolds I need her and a basin of cold water.”

“The doctor’s been sent for, madam, and he should be here within the half-hour. I’ll go see about—”

“He has?” Her face crinkled in distracted confusion. “But how…?”

“James was sent to call him as soon as we heard word from Miss Hart.” 

Elizabeth’s fingers stumbled then clenched convulsively over the buttons she had been fastening. “Word from Miss Hart?” she echoed faintly, sure she could not have heard right.

Lily looked upon her as though she had gone mad, and perhaps she had. Her eyes went past her mistress to the bed where Darcy lay in his stupor and her face contorted in dismay. “Oh forgive me, Mrs Darcy! I was come to tell you, but I thought perhaps Miss Hart had already done so herself, seeing as you asked for the doc—”

Elizabeth heard nothing more as she rushed from the room. 

.*.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?”

Georgiana’s face was colorless and tight with anxiety as she clasped Elizabeth’s hands. Elizabeth squeezed her cold fingers around hers gratefully.

The morning had dissipated in a fog of terror that still clouded her senses. How she had not crumpled upon bursting into the nursery she did not know, but it was a near thing when she found Christopher and Benjamin fidgeting restlessly in their beds, both of them dangerously hot and with cheeks that were red, red, red.  

By the time she assured herself that Elena was hale, if not bewildered by her mama rousing her to ask if she felt well and touching her face all over, Neil arrived.

After completing his examinations of all three patients, his face was set in grim lines as he took Elizabeth and Mrs Reynolds aside to share his diagnosis. “I’m afraid it’s scarlet fever.”

His words, a confirmation of Elizabeth’s worst fear, bore down on her like a tangible weight. She’d heard the stories of entire households struck down by this disease, had seen several children in Meryton herself with cheeks painted like her sons’. Almost none lived out the week.

She brought a hand to her breast, feeling something deep and vital inside her splinter in a way she was sure could never be mended.

“Mrs Darcy,” she heard Neil say, though his voice was muffled beneath the savage beating of her heart. “Elizabeth,” he tried again. “It’s serious, but not hopeless.”

Releasing a shuddering breath, she drew her shoulders back and met his gaze. “Tell me what to do.”

As Neil set about applying his treatments, Elizabeth and the staff did everything they could to make her husband and children as comfortable as possible. She stole away from the fracas for a few precious minutes and dashed off a hardly coherent letter to send to Georgiana by express post.

Georgiana married Anthony Carrington almost five months ago. Their southern Derbyshire estate, Halestone, was only a two hours’ journey from Pemberley. She had not meant for them to come, only to explain and plead to let her send Elena to stay with them until the danger had passed. But the heady wave of relief she felt when Darcy’s sister and her husband arrived that afternoon expunged any exasperation she might have felt at the reckless way they imperiled themselves in breaching a house of malady. 

“You’ve no idea what a comfort for me it will be to have Elena away—” A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed most of it and buried the rest in her daughter’s sweet-smelling hair as she held her close. She was frightened enough as it was without seeing her mama cry. “—from here and safe. We’ll manage.”

“But Mama.” Elena’s voice was so tiny, so unlike herself, that it plucked painfully at Elizabeth’s heartstrings. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you. I want to see Papa.” 

With Miss Hart helping her tend to the boys, Elizabeth had asked Lily to occupy Elena in her bedroom to limit her exposure to the illness. Her daughter knew something was wrong, but all she’d been told was that her brothers and her papa were not feeling well and that she would be going to stay with her aunt and uncle while Elizabeth took care of them.

Though it was the only thing to be done, it had not been an easy decision for her to make. Her daughter was nearly six and would soon be too much grown for Elizabeth to hold her as she was now, but never had she been separated from her child for more than a few hours since the day she was born.

Looking into eyes that were a mirror of her own, she told her gently, “Papa is sleeping, darling. He needs to sleep so he can get better.”

“That’s right,” Georgiana chimed in, attempting something like cheerfulness. “Your mama’s going to be very busy helping him and your brothers feel better, and your Uncle Anthony and I want so much for you to come and visit with us. Won’t you please? I’ve missed you so. And just as soon as your papa and Christopher and Benjamin are well again, we’ll bring you home to tell them all about the wonderful things we’ll do together.”

It was obvious she wasn’t entirely convinced, but they were able to coax Elena from clinging to her mother. When she was seated in the carriage next to Georgiana, Anthony turned to Elizabeth, his voice pitched low.   

“If there’s anything we can do, anything at all, please write. We’re at your disposal.”  

“Thank you,” she replied thickly. “This,” she gestured to her daughter, snuggled under a throw and into her aunt’s side as she listened raptly to whatever Georgiana was whispering conspiratorially to her, “is more help than you could ever know.”

.*.

Elizabeth rubbed circles along Christopher’s heaving back. When he was still again, she handed the basin of sick off to Miss Hart to be disposed of and poured a glass of water from the ewer on his bedside table. Lifting him upright so that he was half cradled against her, she helped him drink until he turned away.

No sooner was he tucked beneath the covers than whimpers arose from across the room where Benjamin was curled up on his side, miserable and small. She sank to her knees by his bedside, stroking back his hair. His strawberry tongue poked out to lick at his dry lips and she made him drink too.

He couldn’t seem to get comfortable, so she took him into her arms. His hot little head rested wearily on her shoulder, and he croaked, “Want my fox.”

Her lips trembled. One of the first things Neil had ordered to avoid the illness from spreading was to have clothes, linens, and anything that Darcy and the boys had recently and extensively been in contact with burned for fear of contamination. Ridiculous as she knew it to be, she wept bitterly upon realizing that Benjamin’s beloved stuffed fox would have to be numbered among those items. Nor had she the heart to tell him, not yet.

“I know, darling,” she crooned past the lump in her throat, “I know.”

Continuing to comb her fingers through his riotous curls, she hummed softly by his ear until his face lost its pinched look and his breathing evened. When she felt his body go slack with deep sleep, she relinquished him to his bed, and Miss Hart returned to take up her vigil. With a lingering look at her sons, Elizabeth rose and went from the room. Four days into this tumultuous routine infirmity brought upon them all, the nursemaid knew to call her without delay if there was any change.

In any other circumstance, leaving her children in this condition would be unthinkable, but her heart was being torn in more directions than she was physically capable of obliging. Though she was far too stubborn and too desperate—a formidable combination in her at the best of times—to let that keep her from trying. 

The awful, wet rattle of her husband’s labored breathing met her at the door. While Christopher and Benjamin’s fevers had—thank God, _thank God_ —finally begun to abate, the same could not be said for Darcy. If anything, he was getting worse. He’d not regained consciousness for the last two days and could hardly hold down water when they were able to force it past his lips, let alone something more substantial.

He was shivering when she reached his side, his teeth chattering with the violence of it, though his face was coated in a sheen of sweat. Sitting on the bed beside him, she wrung out the washcloths steeping in a basin of cold water and began placing them as makeshift cool compresses at his forehead, wrists, and inner thighs the way Neil had shown her.

As she took up the last washcloth to bathe his face and body, Mrs Reynolds entered the room and set down a tray with tea and light fare.

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth quietly, not pausing in her task. 

She felt the housekeeper carefully regarding her. “Mrs Darcy, let me sit with him for a time so that you can rest,” she prevailed upon her as she had done each day, only to be refused. To-day was no different.

But rather than slipping from the room as usual, Mrs Reynolds continued to press her, more maternal chastisement than servant in her tone. “There’s nothing to be gained in going on as you have, save running yourself so ragged that you come to be sick as well. Only sleep a few hours, to keep up your strength.”   

Impossible. Truly, she was touched by Mrs Reynolds’s concern, but the pretense she was affecting was a fragile one, and the instant she stopped doing—had time enough to think—it would all come undone. _She_ would come undone. And then what use would she be? 

Movement beneath her hand.

Mrs Reynolds’s soft exclamation confirmed it was no desperate figment of her imagination. Their gazes met in synchronous exhilaration, only to flit apart to watch for the moment Darcy’s eyes opened.

It never came. Instead, his occasional tossing and turning escalated into something altogether more erratic, his muscles and limbs thrashing more and more wildly until he almost seemed to be having convulsions. His breaths were horrific, strangled gasps, his overworked lungs seemingly incapable of drawing in enough air. As Mrs Reynolds dashed out to call on help, Elizabeth caught one of his twitching hands and pressed it to her breast, clutching it just as fiercely as she did to the tattered shreds of her sanity while her world burned around her.

“Breathe, Fitzwilliam. _Breathe_.”

The hope that had sprouted up inside her shriveled to ash and scattered in the wake of his shallow, pained breaths.

.*.

Never had such utterly disparate feelings inhabited Elizabeth’s frame at once. 

Her boys were on the mend—alert, albeit weak and scratching endlessly at their rashes. But they were eating, talking, even smiling. Darcy’s condition had materially deteriorated, his fever taking a turn into the rheumatic.  

There was nothing more to be done. The fever would break in its own time, or...

The fever would break. 

Neither helplessness nor inaction had ever suited Elizabeth well. Ineffectual a treatment as it was, when she settled in at Darcy's bedside that evening, she brought a book. Perhaps her father's habits were more deeply ingrained in her than she ever supposed. 

She was compelled to pause oftener than was her wont, the inescapable weight in her breast leaving her short of breath, but she continued reading aloud in jagged fragments. The hiss and pop of the fire mingled with her voice to blanket the room in a halcyon veneer.

.*. 

It was the preternatural silence that jarred her awake. 

Halfway between sleep and waking as she sat there in the gloaming, fatigue and frayed nerves (heaven forbid she ever use the expression in her mother's presence) hummed beneath her skin. Her eyes flickered to the smoldering embers in the hearth, the only source of light. She took up the book situated precariously on her knees, closed it, and rose to place it on the mantel. Standing there, the vague sense of unease continued to creep over her.

The feeling crescendoed when she realized that the ragged sound of Darcy's breathing, her unfaltering companion all this wretched se'nnight, was absent. 

Blindly, she staggered towards the bed. Her sight grew accustomed to the dark by degrees until she could make out his features, so very still against the pillow.  

_God, no. Please, God, no._

The hysteria that had been festering ever since she woke to find him in a fevered delirium throbbed behind her eyes, pulsed through her veins, welled up in her throat, until she thought the only release of it would be to scream. 

And then his chest rose high with the easiest, steadiest breath she’d seen him take in days.

The tension keeping her upright seeped away until her body refused to support her an instant longer. She caught herself on the edge of the bed to prevent from dropping to the floor entirely. She was lightheaded, disbelief and hope and—above it all—relief churning and frothing together until she had to rest her head on the counterpane. 

“Elizabeth?”

She looked up to find gray eyes, a bit bleary, but open and blessedly lucid, watching her.   

A bone-deep tremor started at her numb fingertips and rippled through her entire body. The dam in her chest cracked, crumbled, and the sound that tore from her throat was frightful even to her.

With a movement that certainly looked as inelegant as it felt, Elizabeth flung herself across her husband’s wasted chest, burrowed her face in his neck, and sobbed. 

Now that it was no longer needed, her courage forsook her. A cascade of repressed grief wrenched out of her in wave after wave. It was difficult to stop once she started, so she didn't try. Instead, she focused on the comfort of his bristled, sweat-stale skin, warm but no longer an inferno.

Daybreak streaked rose and gold across the sky when at last her crying faded. Darcy’s hand was sluggishly stroking up and down her spine, and he was murmuring into her hair. Not one word he said had she understood, but just the sound of his voice was balm for her soul. She felt wrung out as she leaned away only far enough to see his dear face, taking in everything from his ashen complexion, leeched of that terrible ruddy blaze of color, to the abysmal state of his hair. Her eyes blurred with fresh tears.

“Elizabeth,” he said again hoarsely.

Oh, how selfish she was. She forced herself to leave his arms, hurrying to pour a glass of water. Her hands fluttered over him irresolutely before asking, “Do you feel strong enough to try to sit up?” 

At his nod, she helped raise him gently, cautiously, but he couldn’t stop the harsh groan that left him as his muscles protested the movement after being bedridden for so long. Propping him up with a legion of pillows at his back, she made him drain first one glass, then another, before letting him fall back on the pillows, exhausted and seeming to fall into a light doze. 

Tracing his jaw even as she stood, she whispered, “I’ll be but a moment.”

She all but ran to the servants’ hall, creating a stir of the staff’s breakfast when she appeared, disheveled and with overbright eyes, but it was a joyous one once they understood the master was awake. Elizabeth left it to Mrs Reynolds to arrange with cook for clear broth and anything light Darcy's stomach could handle to be prepared. James was sent out once again to bring this latest news to Neil.

On her way back to their rooms, she stopped in the nursery to inquire with Miss Hart how the boys had passed the night, pressing the nursemaid’s hand in wordless gratitude. She stayed a beat more, soaking in the sight of her children sleeping peacefully, before stepping out again. 

Mrs Reynolds was just behind Elizabeth with a tray, and Darcy roused as they entered the room. The housekeeper was visibly emotional, but she held her composure admirably, patting his cheek fondly like he was a small boy and then bustling out again.

Feeding him the contents of the bowl was an undertaking Elizabeth performed with militant efficiency until it was empty. For a minute or two, he let her bluster about, drawing the drapes for his sensitive eyes and needlessly fluffing his pillows. Once she was in reach, he grasped her wrist with fingers that were stronger than they had been a quarter of an hour ago and tugged her to sit on the bed beside him. 

Without a task on which to focus her nervous energy, the consciousness of his warm gaze alone was eliciting tears. Impatiently, she tried to blink them away. His thumb brushed an errant drop from her lashes, then continued to sweep back and forth across her cheekbone soothingly. She squeezed her eyes closed, just feeling. 

“You look as if you haven’t slept in days. Was it so bad to deserve this state you’ve worked yourself into just for me?”

Her eyes snapped open, but she hesitated. He must have seen something change in her expression, for his hold on her tightened, urging her to speak.

“Not just for you,” she answered slowly, fighting to keep both her voice and her hands steady. 

Darcy tensed, thumb pausing. “What do you mean?”

“The boys—”

Those scant two words had hardly left her lips before he was scrabbling to free himself from the bedclothes, tangling himself more hopelessly in his frenzy.

“Be calm! They’re well, they’re well now!”

She pushed down on his shoulders and his arms gave out, sending him crashing back onto the bed. It was a sobering testament to how great a toll his illness had taken that she was able to overpower him.

But he continued to struggle against her. “I want to see them,” he panted. “I have to—”

“You will,” she promised quickly, “when they awaken, and after Neil examines you.”

Reluctantly, he went still. “And Elena?”

“At Halestone with Georgiana and Anthony. I’ll write to them while Neil is with you. She’ll be over the moon to see you.”

She could see the questions gathering in his eyes, but all he said was, “Tell me everything.”

She didn’t tell him everything, or at least, she painted it all in such broad strokes and hopeful shades that it conveyed not a fraction of the misery, the terror, the anguish that had curdled Pemberley’s very air. Even if she wished to, what words could have adequately explained it?

The tender empathy shining in his eyes told her somehow he knew. “How you must have suffered.” He was cupping her face again. “I am so sorry.”

Heart too full to speak, the tears splashed unbidden down her cheeks. How tiresome it was to cry so often. She left them unchecked, only bringing her forehead to rest on his shoulder. 

.*.

Benjamin inquisitively stroked the stubble on Darcy’s face, giggling as his hand was sprinkled with scratchy kisses for his trouble. Christopher was drowsing with his head pillowed on her lap. It was past their bedtime, but the thought of taking them to the nursery and disturbing the contentment on her husband’s face persuaded Elizabeth to put it off.

Benjamin had just dropped off when the sound of running feet approached their door. It was all the warning they had before Elena came bursting in.

“Papa! Mama!”

Still wearing her coat and mittens, she crawled up the bed and over her sleeping brothers until she could hug her mother. Then she whirled to throw her arms around her father’s neck, and with the arm that wasn’t full of Benjamin, he pulled her closer, tucking her under his chin.

“Are you feeling better?”

“So much better. Mama took very good care of us all.” She let him go only to sit between them on the bed and cuddle into Darcy’s side. “Now, tell me all about your visit with Aunt Georgiana.”

Elizabeth knew she ought to go downstairs to greet Georgiana and Anthony and ensure a room was readied for them, but as Elena’s bright buzz of words washed over her, she lingered just a little longer, indulging herself in this moment of having her family whole and happy and together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hand to God this wasn’t intentional, but I worked out where this falls on the timeline I made forever ago, and basically, Darcy baby number four is _totally_ a result of celebratory oh-thank-God-you’re-not-dead-I-love-you-never-leave-me “alone time” after this nightmare. I’m so okay with that. 
> 
> ~~I could’ve lied, just pretended this was my plan all along and that I think things through to that level of detail, but let’s be real, we all know I’m not and never was that good.~~
> 
> Transitional noises, I'm marking this story complete. Not to say I won't still have something to add to this collection from time to time as usual, but since each chapter is self-contained, and children have been conceived, born, and cut teeth in the space between my updates, it makes sense. To be clear, that's not a veiled reference to me having children; just, you know, generally speaking about the development of hypothetical children during my radio silence. I'll stop now.


End file.
